Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
Wanted: Book Editor
Minimum Requirements: High School diploma with a C+ average in English
Starting Salary: $10.23/hour
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There are a lot of freelance editors with Masters and Doctorates who would be happy to be paid $10.23 per hour by a book publisher for copyediting. Publishers are paying freelance editors today what they paid in 1995 for more work and are trying to push those prices even lower.
One seeker of freelance editors, not so long ago, sent out this solicitation:
Quote:
Hi,
Hope, you’ve true spirit while reading this email.
We're a leading company in pre-press industry and have hugeamount of work for copyediting and cold-reading on regular basis. I've got yourbrief details from web and would like to see if you're interested to associatewith us. The major subject would be Science, Technology and Medicine for Booksand Journals. We're dealing with International clients only so they need veryhigh standard of Quality and on time delivery so there will not be anycompromise on these front.
The proposed rates are as under...
Copyediting - $0.80 per page
Cold-reading - $0.50 per page
There will be a Non-competent agreement between us beforestarting the live project. Payment criteria would be one month and you shouldraise your invoice on monthly basis on/or before 10 day of each month.
I can clarify further if you will have any doubt on this.
Waiting for your positive response.
Best,
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Copyediting speed for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine) under the best of circumstances is about 8 pages an hour, with most manuscripts coming in at 4 to 6 pages an hour. With increasing frequency, STEM manuscripts are requiring what is called "heavy" editing, which usually means 1 to 2 pages an hour, sometimes 3 pages an hour.
There is no increased rate offered for experienced editors. The above solicitation was one I received and they had contacted me because I had 30 years of experience editing STEM books, as well as advanced degrees.
I replied that I was not interested but pleased to see that they were offering a "Non-competent agreement" because only an incompetent U.S. editor (which is what the company was specifically seeking) would agree to do STEM editing for such prices.
I can't imagine what this company was offering fiction editors.