The free sample edit

A few considerations: The free sample edit helps me to understand a bit about your project and give you a fair and accurate quote, and it helps you to understand my approach and whether it feels appropriate to your needs.

Hard selling isn't my thing, so there is absolutely no obligation to continue to work with me after the sample edit. However, before getting the ball rolling, I ask that you please check my services are potentially within your budget – more details under the following headings.

Books: For a copyedit, the level of appropriate support can vary quite significantly, but as a rough guide, I can cover 600–1500 words an hour for a first edit. So, for example, a book of 80,000 words would likely represent 53–133 hours of work at £20/€23/US$25 per hour.  If your writing needs intensive reworking on the sentence structure level (sometimes referred to as line editing) and a lot of queries to be made, you are likely to be on the lower end of this scale. If you are an experienced wordsmith and perhaps have already done a few rounds of self-editing (good but not usually enough by itself), you are likely to be at the higher end of the scale.

For a proofread, we are normally talking about 1500–2500 words an hour. So a book of 80,000 words would represent 32–53 hours of work at the prices mentioned above. I should say that people often think they need a proofread when really they need a copyedit – but the sample edit is a good way for us to work this out.

I realise that is a broad range of numbers, so if you are not quite sure, let's just get on with it and do a sample edit to bring some clarity to the situation!

Website check, annual report, crowdfunding project, etc: Adaptability is a key priority for me, so please get in touch if you have something else which you think might benefit from some editorial support, and we can find a creative way to do a free sample edit.