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Combined copyediting and proofreading

This is the service I focus on providing, because it seems to me to be the most suitable for self-published authors. There are various kinds of editing, and you’ll find many people who will happily provide you with precise definitions of what each involves – but they don’t all provide quite the same definitions. I think the simplest way to look at it is that there are two broad types of editing. There is editing that aims to help authors with the creative process. Development editing might provide something as significant as suggestions on changing the structure of a novel. Line-editing may include significant changes to description or prose to improve on the style of writing. No doubt there are some self-published authors who are interested in such services, but I suspect they’re in the minority.

I offer a service to authors who are confident they’ve created a work which is fundamentally complete, but who are realistic enough to know that their work is likely to contain some unfortunate errors and some sentences that could clearly be improved: sentences that could be clearer, questionably chosen words, grammatical errors, regrettable inconsistencies, the occasional typo. I suggest simple edits that could fix problems the author might have missed, and find and correct the errors that slipped through. The aim is to ensure that the reader experiences the novel that the author aimed to present them with.

But shouldn’t you hire different people for copyediting and proofreading?

Yes – you absolutely should! But then, you should also have lots of money to pay them both. And while you’re at it, to hire a line-editor and a formatter, and maybe an even better, more expensive, cover artist. As I suspect you know, however, things are not always the way they should be! For most self-published authors I suspect there’s only one reason to look for someone to provide separate copyediting or proofreading services: because they plan to save money by hiring only one – which is regrettable, but not unreasonable.

If you’re only paying for one service, I think proofreading makes more sense. Proofreading is focused on catching clear errors – the sort of thing that a reader will notice and know to be an error. Readers will also notice the sorts of problems that copyediting aims to fix, but they might not be seen as clearly wrong: the reader might find themselves rereading a sentence, or unsure about a meaning, but they may just shrug it off as unimportant, or even assume it was their failure to understand rather than the author’s failure to write more clearly. Which is not ideal, to put it mildly, but it’s preferable to an obvious error.

How much is this going to cost?

Don’t you hate it when a website seems to be offering something you’re interested it, but it won’t just come out and tell how much it’s going to cost? I wouldn’t do that to you –this is how much I charge:

Copyediting and proofreading: £10/$12.80/€11.80 per thousand words.
Proofreading: £7.50/$9.60/€8.90 per thousand words.
Special offer: half price for the first book you hire me to edit.