RATES ETC.

RATES

I charge $30 an hour for all copy­edit­ing ser­vices and consulting.

 

ESTIMATES

To receive an esti­mate, send me your project—either in its entirety or a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sample*—as an attach­ment through the online con­tact form. I will also need to dis­cuss your options, needs, and goals with you before I can com­plete the esti­mate. Many factors—some obvi­ous and some not so—contribute to the amount of time it takes me to com­plete an edit­ing project, for example:

  • length (two-page newslet­ter vs. mul­ti­page annual report)
  • tech­ni­cal level (children’s book vs. sci­en­tific article)
  • com­plex­ity (text book with exten­sive foot­notes and for­mat­ting vs. novel)
  • author’s expe­ri­ence level with writ­ing, gram­mar, usage, and style rules
  • type of edit­ing the client requests (quick review for spelling and punc­tu­a­tion vs. edit­ing for clar­ity, syn­tax, and structure)
  • spe­cial requests (client has a company-specific style guide vs. an indus­try stan­dard like The Chicago Man­ual of Style)

All esti­mates are not-to-exceed esti­mates. Each esti­mate includes a range of hours I think it will take me to edit the project. Even if the edit­ing takes me longer than I esti­mated, you will not pay more than the max­i­mum estimate.

{*If you pro­vide one or two sam­ple pages for me to use to gen­er­ate an esti­mate and  I feel that the entire project is sig­nif­i­cantly more or less com­plex than the sam­ple, I will con­tact you to rene­go­ti­ate the total cost.}

 

WHAT’S INCLUDED

All edits, queries, and com­ments are made with Microsoft Word’s track-changes fea­ture. Hard-copy edit­ing is avail­able upon request. If your project is not a Word doc­u­ment (e.g., web­site, Power Point, PDF), call or e-mail me to dis­cuss how I can make the edits so they will be easy to observe and understand.

The style guides I use most fre­quently are The Chicago Man­ual of Style, Words into Type, and Gregg Ref­er­ence Man­ual. How­ever, I can use any style guide you pre­fer (e.g., The Asso­ci­ated Press Style­book, U.S. Gov­ern­ment Print­ing Office Style Man­ual). If your orga­ni­za­tion has its own house style guide, you can send me a copy and I will apply that style to your project. If I am not famil­iar with that style, I might need more time to edit your project.

My ref­er­ences for spelling vari­ants and hyphen­ation are Merriam-Webster’s Col­le­giate Dic­tio­nary, Eleventh Edi­tion and Webster’s Third New Inter­na­tional Dic­tio­nary, Unabridged.

When I return the edited files to clients, I include a com­pre­hen­sive project sum­mary and a copy of the style sheet. I also main­tain a pref­er­ence list (style, terms, guides, etc.) for each client to ensure con­sis­tency from project to project.

Clients can send me one follow-up e-mail of rea­son­able length with ques­tions relat­ing to the edited doc­u­ment. Addi­tional phone or e-mail con­sul­ta­tions are sub­ject to my hourly rate.

 

PAYMENTS

Pay­ments can be made by check or through Pay­Pal. I will send an invoice for 50 per­cent of the min­i­mum esti­mate. I will begin work­ing on the project when I receive the pay­ment. When I have com­pleted the project, I will send a sec­ond invoice for the bal­ance due.

 

GUARANTEE

I want you to be  pleased with your edited project. If you are dis­sat­is­fied, please call or e-mail me. I am very inter­ested in your feed­back and would like to know about and hear your con­cerns. I guar­an­tee the qual­ity of my work and will offer to redo your project or give you a full or par­tial refund to ensure your satisfaction.

 

REFERRALS

My busi­ness ben­e­fits when sat­is­fied clients rec­om­mend my edit­ing ser­vices to oth­ers. For a refer­ral that results in new busi­ness, clients get 10 per­cent off their next edit­ing project.

 

PRIVACY & CONFIDENTIALITY

I do not share or sell clients’ per­sonal infor­ma­tion. Period. While I am work­ing on a project, I will not share, dis­close, or dis­cuss the con­tent of the project with any­one, and I will not reveal a client’s name or the project’s title with­out per­mis­sion. I will sign a con­fi­den­tial­ity agree­ment upon request.