When to Raise Rates for Book Editors
Let’s talk about when to raise rates for book editors. How do you know when it’s the right time? I have a few tips for this.
Is it Time to Raise Your Rates?
It’s common for freelancers to get stuck on a low-paying treadmill. They take a few poorly paying gigs to get some experience but once they have that experience they keep on working those low-paying gigs.
That’s not just depressing, it’s hard, hard work.
The Calculation: When to Raise Rates for Book Editors
Suppose you want to earn $60,000 this year (this is low income where I live but it’s a reasonable number for a newer editor to shoot for). If you charge $600 per project, each year you need to do 100 projects. If you’re a freelance editor who works with indie author clients, this often means finding 100 clients, as most indie authors don’t write more than one or two books a year. So you have to find those 100 clients and you have to edit those 100 projects, and you just cannot possibly have the time to do good work or have the bandwidth to find better clients.
I’m using a ridiculously low fee here to illustrate the point, but I also know there are editors that charge this rate to edit a full-length novel.
Frankly, I’m too lazy to work that hard for so little money. Be lazy, too, and you’ll wind up with a fatter bank account.
A 20% increase to $720 = 82 projects per year or about 1.5 per week. For editors working with indie authors, that means finding about 6 clients and doing 6 projects per month month versus finding 8 clients per month and doing 8 projects per month.
That’s still a ridiculous number of projects and clients but it is much more doable.
Even if you lose some clients by raising your rates, it doesn’t matter because you don’t need as many clients to sustain yourself.
Tips for Editors & Writers
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Helping Authors Strengthen Story Settings
The setting of a novel consists of multiple elements, big and small, that nest inside each other like those little Russian dolls. We might show this hierarchy of settings like so: If you think about it, the micro setting of “the living room of 601 San Mateo Road Apartment 16” implies the existence of all…
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World-building Without Info-Dumping
World-building is often seen as the province of science fiction and fantasy writers who have to convey new-to-us settings and cultures, and occasionally by historical writers who have to convey the feel of an era that a reader may not know much about. But every story takes place somewhere. Even stories set in a contemporary…
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The Connection Between Character and Setting
Authors have a tendency to prefer focusing on character and/or plot at the expense of setting/world-building. (The exception is some SFF writers, who focus on setting and forget about plot and character.) So as editors we will often call that out and say something like, “Add a little description here. Otherwise it’s like Miles and…
