The main authority for establishing editing rates is the EFA or Editorial Freelancers Association. According to the EFA, copyediting rates range between $40–$60 per hour or $0.03–$0.06 per word.
However, this is only one source of information. Other sources of information besides the EFA will have prices that may differ drastically from this. So how do you determine whether or not your editor is charging you a fair rate for editing services?
Well, it all depends on what your expectations are. There is no standard rate to pay an editor. The only correct pay is what you and your editor agree on. Nonetheless, in this article, we examine the prices that you should expect to pay for various editing services. Read on to learn more.
What factors determine editing prices?
The cost of an editor varies according to several factors. It depends on who you rely on for editing services. The more senior the content editor, the higher the price will be. The more junior or less experienced the editor, the lower.
However, experience is not the only factor. Let's quickly list these factors before taking a deeper look at each one:
The level of experience
The type of industry
The type of editing required
The level of experience refers to the seniority of the editor. The type of industry refers to the types of editing based on industry. There are three major types of editing: 1. Editing for literature or book editing; 2. Editing for academia or academic editing; and 3. Content editing, that is, editing associated with business blogging.
Lastly, the type of editing refers to the level of editing. Editing can range from heavy editing that rewrites and revises most of the content drastically to light proofreading that focuses on aspects such as grammar, punctuation, and the idiomatic use of English.
The table below shows this breakdown for editing based on industry:
Industry | Definition | Example | Clientele |
Business | Editing for copy |
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Literature | Editing for books |
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Academia | Editing for academic works |
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In this article, I provide a breakdown of the prices that you should expect for hiring an editor for these various industries, with a focus on the content editing industry. In doing so, I provide the rates for the various types of editing.
This is not clear-cut and does provide some challenges. The various types of editing are normally categorized into 1. Developmental editing, which is a more drastic form of editing that begins at the beginning stages of writing, even at the proposal or rough draft stages; 2. Copyediting, which includes editing line-by-line to improve the quality of already-written or completed content; and 3. Proofreading, which is late-stage editing just before publication.
It makes sense to assume that editing at the earliest stages will be more expensive than proofreading. However, how do you define developmental editing rates for content editing? For academia and the book or literary industry, these definitions are well-established enough. However, for content, it's somewhat loose.
There is also the issue of editing AI-generated content. What name do we use to describe editing for such content? What is the classification for this type of editing? Is it developmental editing, copyediting, or something else? In this article, I try to address all these questions.
To determine the average diting rates per industry, I rely on various sources. For the academic and literary editing industries, I looked at the rates from the Editorial Freelancers Association in addition to rates offered by a host of online academic editing websites.
For the content industry, I look at the rates offered by a range of professional content editing companies. There are few examples of articles that provide this type of data. So, I hope you find it useful.
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1. Rates in the academic and literary editing industries
The EFA is a member association for editors all over the world that is based in New York, and they are a major source of editing prices and rates in academic and book editing industries. The information we included from them is median rates based on data collected from members in a survey administered between November 2023 through mid-January 2024.
The total number of respondents was one thousand, which represented 30.3% of the organization’s membership. The table below condenses a range of rates across various types of industries to come up with easy-to-work-with ranges.
Please consult the original study by the EFA for more detailed information: EFA editorial rates.
Type of Editing | Hourly Fee | Price Per Word | Editor Roles |
Developmental editing | $50–$70 | $0.04–$0.07 | Extensive revision, rewriting, and reconfiguration of content. Fixes “Big Picture” issues. |
Copyediting | $40–$62.50 | $0.03-$0.06 | Copyeditors are responsible for correcting spelling, grammar, usage, and punctuation, as well as enforcing style guides. |
Line editing | $45–$70 | $0.04–$0.06 | The editor works at the sentence or paragraph level of a project. They correct errors, with a focus on improving the language and style of the text. |
Proofreading | $40–$62.50 | $0.02–$0.04 | Proofreaders are brought in the last stage of the editing process. They often compare the latest stage of the manuscript to earlier stages to ensure the correct changes have been made. |
As can be seen, the rates vary markedly based on the type of editing that is conducted. Proofreading and copyediting fetch rates that range between $40 and $62.50. Line editing and developmental editing are comparable, with line editing having a lower starting range of $45 per hour compared to $50 for developmental editing.
However, EFA rates are based strictly on member self-reports, and they may not accurately reflect the true state of the market. For example, the hordes of freelance editors on Fiverr and Upwork are likely not EFA members. Nonetheless, they likely have a massive effect on the price that the average editor may have to accept.
In addition, there are a range of professional editing companies, especially in the academic editing industry that make up a substantial portion of the editing industry. We will take a look at the rates which they charge.
2. Rates in the academic editing industry
Proofreading companies have arisen all over the internet to meet the growing demand for proofreading and editing services. This demand is driven by thousands of foreign students who have to complete their theses or dissertations in English even if English is not their first language.
Other market segments include scholars trying to get published in prestigious English-language journals for promotions and funding in academia. Before we proceed, let’s see how these proofreading companies work.
The prices they charge vary. The bar chart below shows pricing for 22 different websites providing proofreading services. The pricing unit is USD per 1000 words. The maximum price was 165 USD charged by Edanz — a proofreading service based in Japan. The minimum price was 13 USD charged by London Proofreaders, a company based in London. The Median price was 30 USD.
Academic editing companies
Academic proofreading and editing companies are the most frequent and transparent editing companies online. They are online editing businesses that offer 24-hour editing services using a combination of in-house and freelance writers.
There are dozens of them, and they all have a set of typical features:
They are usually online services
They are available 24-7
They have turnaround time ranging from two hours to one week
They usually have a pair review system, with two editors looking at your manuscript
Their editors are typically well-trained and proficient
They cater to students and academics
Famous names in this online editing industry include Scribbr, Paper True, Scribendi, Editor World, and so on. The table below shows the top ten companies and the prices per 1000 words.
This is from a previous article that sought to rank the services of these companies. You can check it out here: Top Ten Best Proofreading Services.
Rank | Proofreading Service | Standard Price in USD Per 1000 Words | Country |
1 | Cambridge Proofreading | $30 | USA |
2 | Paper True | $32 | India |
3 | Proofreading Pal | $28 | USA |
4 | Scribendi | $37 | Canada |
5 | Scribbr | $42 | Netherlands |
6 | Editor World | $28 | USA |
7 | Proofed | $45 | South Africa |
8 | Wordvice | $48 | UK |
9 | Editage | $58 | USA |
10 | Enago | $58 | USA |
As can be seen, the median pricing for these companies is substantially lower than the rates offered by the members of the EFA. Moreover, there are no fine gradations in terms of the type of editing offered by these companies.
Most of them make no major distinction between developmental editing and copyediting. However, the cheaper price may not always be a good thing. Although the editors who work for these companies are well-trained and proficient, you will have zero control over communication with them.
You simply have to trust that the agent that you’re working through communicates your concerns or your editing goals accurately. Paying extra money to have access to a professional editor that you can directly communicate with probably makes more sense.
3. Rates in the content editing industry
Rates in the content editing industry are much less clear-cut than in the academic editing industry. Most content editing providers provided plans and packages that were charged monthly. This means that their focus is on retaining clients over long periods.
We looked at a website called EditorNinja. They offered rates ranging from $250 per article for SEO editing and $850 per month for regular editing. A few of the academic editing websites offered "business editing" services. However, these editing services were not as well defined as their specialty academic editing services.
For example, they mention nothing about SEO editing services. Nonetheless, the table below provides the rates for a few of these academic editing services:
Name of Company | Editing Rate/Word | AI Editing Rates |
WordVice | 0.044 | 9.95/per month |
EditorWorld | 0.049 | NA |
Scribendi | 0.03 | $5.99/per month |
All three of these companies, Wordvice, EditorWorld, and Scribendi, provide "business editing" services. Scribendi offers the lowest rates at $0.03, followed by Wordvice, then EditorWorld. Wordvice and Scribendi also offer the option of AI editing.
This is proprietary proofreading software that you can use on your own to edit content. It is priced at a monthly rate of 9.95/ per month for Wordvice and $5.99/per month for Scribendi. Stay tuned for an article reviewing the performance of such software.
On the topic of AI, the content industry has been flooded with AI-written content. AI content is easy and cheap to produce. However, the content faces several challenges, such as hallucinations, unoriginality, and robotic tone.
As a result, a whole new industry has evolved: editing AI-produced content. The amount of money that you end up paying for editing AI content depends on the quality of the content. Low-quality content that results from poorly written content briefs would require higher rates.
However, content that is factually accurate, but that only requires editing to sound more human, would fetch lower editing rates. However, there is no clear-cut way to define what rates should be charged for editing AI content. The focus should be on finding an editor that you can work and communicate with clearly. This would be the foundation for negotiating reasonable rates and pricing.
4. Copyediting vs. editorial assessment
In addition to copyediting and developmental editing, you may also require an editorial assessment of your work. This is less true of academic authors and students than it is true for literary authors. So what is an editorial assessment?
An editorial assessment includes providing thorough feedback to the author on the early draft of their manuscript. An editorial assessment usually includes:
A detailed inventory of what is working and what is not working
What improvements can be made
Problems in tone and consistency
However, unlike copyediting, an editorial assessment does not include any direct edits. It is more or less a series of notes in the form of author comments. These comments are usually a single document that provides a thorough overview of the big-picture issues in your early manuscript.
What exactly are big-picture issues? These are elements that affect the consistency and believability in your story. For example, the way characters behave should be consistent throughout your novel. The logistics of your plot and setting should also be right and logical. For example, a character should not move from Location A to Location B in one hour by car if the distance by car between the two locations is established to be about three hours.
Editorial assessments also give you advice based on the industry in which you are publishing. Let's say you are publishing in the romance industry. An editorial assessment may show you ways in which you can change your plot or writing style to fit with the trends of the romance publishing industry. Perhaps your charcterization is too in line with literary writing and you are advised to make your book more rom-com.
Editorial assessment is typical of the book fiction industry as opposed to the academic editing industry, as mentioned earlier. According to Reedsy, the average editorial assessment is 0.0197 per word.
The question of rates for editing AI-generated content
There is also the question of setting editing rates for AI-generated content. The initial enthusiasm that people had for AI-produced content has slowly settled down. People now realize that AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude are no longer gamechangers. Instead, they are tools that can be used to make your content production more efficient.
This means after using AI to produce such content, it has to be edited. So how do you decide editing rates for AI-generated content? Do you price it lower than human-generated content, or do you price it higher?
This is a crucial question as many content marketers and managers have adopted AI as part of their content production process. However, quickly after adopting AI, they soon found out that it is far from perfect. This is for several reasons. The biggest criticism of AI-generated writing is that it sounds like badly written academic essays.
This is really a problem of tone and style. The people most likely to rely heavily on AI are content marketers who produce content for business blogs. If that is you, then your audience will not appreciate the stuffy robotic tone of AI-generated content.
Therefore, as a content manager or content marketer, you should ensure that the editing services that you use understand the importance of tone of voice or ToV.
AI-generated copy comes with many pros. It's fast. It's cheap. It's easy. On top of that, it allows you to scale content relatively quickly. However, it comes with a bunch of cons. The technology is still at the developmental stages. The setbacks are all related to these teething problems. These include:
Hallucinations
Thin content
Lack of originality
Robotic tone of voice
Hallucinations refer to the tendency of ChatGPT and other AI-generated applications make things up. Lack of originality means that generative AI simply spins already-existing content and rearranges. There is nothing new or original.
This is also somewhat associated with Thin content. Because generative AI simply sums up other people's content, you usually end up with a pale version of the original. This means small three sentence paragraphs that do not amount to 300 words, even after you ask for 1000 words.
Lastly, ChatGPT remains a robot, a big dumb one. This means it talks like a robot and writes like a robot. Its tone of voice simply ain't human. Your potential customers will instinctively be turned off by such content.
What does this all mean for the editing rates for AI content? Editors who edit AI-generated content should be paid to fix the common issues associated with AI-generated copy. This means:
Rewriting to expand content to fix thin content issues
Editing to fix ToV issues
Editing to remove hallucinations
The price you end up paying depends on what type of work needs to be done. For example, expanding content would be less editing and more content writing and would likely be priced higher than simply "editing."
At EminentEdit, our editors have experience writing using AI content writing tools, as well as experience editing with such software. We understand both the pros and cons of using AI-generated content. And we know exactly how to use human editing to bridge the gap between these pros and cons.
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How EminentEdit can help with editing your content
EminentEdit provides high-quality copyediting services to ensure that your project achieves the intended effect. This goes for both students and academics and content managers. We're a small group of professional editors with extensive experience.
EminentEdit is unique in that we are just as good in editing academic documents as we are in editing blog content. This includes correcting for tone of voice and style to increase the chances that readers who visit your site will convert.
We also edit for SEO to maximize the likelihood of these visitors landing on your site to even begin with. In short, we aim to make sure you end up with content that both Google and readers love. And it's all done at a reasonable price.
Take a look at our price chart to see how we match low cost with value. Our regular editing prices begin as low as $0.03/word:
Type of Editing | Description | Price Per Word ($) |
Regular Copyediting | Line-by-line editing to improve tone and sentence structure. | $0.03 |
Editorial Assessment | 5 to 12 pages providing a detailed analysis of the work's strengths and weaknesses, with specific suggestions for improvement. | $0.0197 |
AI Editing | Editing to improve tone and fact-checking. | $0.05 |
AI Editing Without Fact-Checking | Editing to improve tone and to humanify. | $0.02 |
Regular Proofreading | Editing to uncover and fix minor grammar, punctuation, and style errors. | $0.02 |
SEO Editing | Editing to improve search engine performance and keyword usage. | $0.1 |
Our work doesn't just begin with reviewing and correcting the final product. We begin with looking at your proposal or content plan and briefs. Our content editing services include the following:
Editing for tone of voice
Editing and proofreading books of all genres
Substantive editing to improve the quality of your writing on a sentence level
Proofreading to make sure your writing is grammatically correct with proper spelling and punctuation
Help with verifying the factual accuracy of your content
Help with editing AI-generated content
So feel free to get in touch through our contact page here: CONTACT US AT EMINENT EDIT.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2024, November 9). How Much Does it Cost to Hire an Editor? EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/how-much-does-it-cost-to-hire-an-editor |
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