Hey! Welcome to the first post in The Midnight Blog. It’s good to see you here, night owls.
As the title says, my prices have changed. The reasons why are pretty typical for any freelancer: I’m gaining experience, both in editing skill and in running my business.
When I started my business, I set my prices with a few things in mind: the rates survey gathered by the EFA, the rates set by other professionals in my niche (fantasy, sci-fi, speculative fiction, etc.), the fact that I’m new in the business, and an idea of how much time and work a project would take.
Since I started my business this past September, I’ve taken on clients, continued my education, and developed relationships with other editor colleagues. All of this experience and feedback has told me that my rates, while they have served me well so far, need a bit of adjusting.
In the future, I will revisit my rates once a year at the end of the year. New changes, if any, will go into effect on January 1 of the next year and I will tell clients and blog subscribers in an email and a blog post.
While I was crunching numbers, I made sure that my new prices were in line with the rates survey gathered by the Editorial Freelancer’s Association (EFA); meaning, that my prices are comparable to other freelancers of my experience level in my field.
So! Without further ado, here’s a summary of the new pricing and what I’ve changed:
Beta-reading
I heard from several beta-reading clients that annotated manuscripts are NOT expected in a typical beta-read. So I decided to split beta-reading into two packages: a standard and a premium.
The standard package is what previous clients would’ve considered a more “typical” beta-read and it’s set close to the old price: $1.50 per 1,000 words with a minimum cost of $75. The difference? It won’t include an annotated manuscript.
The new premium beta-read will be to $2 per 1,000 words and will include everything (the letter, the email support, AND the annotated manuscript).
Manuscript evaluations
After some thought-provoking feedback, I’ve decided to reshape the focus of this service a little bit.
My website refers to this service with the subtitle, “The Indie Edit.” That means that this service will be intended for authors who want to self-publish instead of going through the rigamarole of trying to get traditionally published. This way, you don’t sink $5,000 into a manuscript that you can’t guarantee will sell $5,000 worth of copies.
The manuscript evaluation is meant to maximize a self-published author’s return on investment while still enabling them to create the best possible version of their manuscript.
This revised service will be $1,000 and will include all other deliverables PLUS a light copyedit and line edit of the novel.
Developmental editing
Here, the main change is that I’ve decreased the total price to $1,700 and removed the book map as a standard feature of this edit.
Truth is, a book needs a book map when there are structural problems. If the chronology is weird, if pacing is one of the main struggles, if there are many subplots to tackle and don’t get resolved, other things like that. Outside of that, a book map starts to lose its functionality.
That doesn’t mean I’m not doing book maps anymore – book maps will now be an extra service that can be requested on top of a developmental edit.
Okay! I believe that’s everything. As always, if you have any questions I’m just an email away.