Eleven Questions to ask before you engage an editor

1. How long have you been editing professionally?

2. Do you have qualifications in English?

3. Do you have formal editing qualifications?

4. Have you done any work before on projects like mine?

5. Have any of them been published?

6. Will you give me some clients’ names so I can speak to them?

7. Will you give me a sample edit so I can see what I’ll get?

8. How many words/ pages do you edit per hour?

9. What do you charge?

10. Will you do the work yourself?

11. Will you give me a firm price or an estimate?

And the Book Doctor’s answers:

1. For over ten years full-time.

2. Yes: BA (Hons), Dip Arts, MA and PhD (distinction), all in English.

3. No (there is not yet a formal Australian qualification for electronic editing). But I have been teaching editing at university level for ten years.

4. What is your project? Call me and we’ll talk about it. If we don't think we are the right people for you, we'll pass on your details to other editors (with your permission).

5. See 4.

6. No; we live in a confidentiality-obsessed world, and we will not give out clients’ names. But we do list comments on our website; you can see them here.

7. Certainly; but conditions apply. You can find out more here.

8. It depends on the project: fiction is generally faster than general non-fiction; academic work is slower. If English is your second language it will probably take longer to edit your work. Roughly, work on 300 words per hour.

9. We charge $63 per hour. This is below the average rate set by the Institute of Editors, who recommend up to $120 per hour.

10. Yes. We do not outsource work.

11. If we edit a portion of your work, we will give you a firm price based on the sample. However, conditions apply, and you can find out about them here.
If we do not edit a portion first, we will give you an estimate. Generally (not always) fiction comes in cheaper than the estimate, and non-fiction a little more expensive.