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Now open for affordable proofreading/copy editing work!
12 years ago
Writers, students, and everyone else out there who needs to produce a lot of text: Effective immediately, I will be offering paid proofreading services to those who may feel they need them.
Although I am not a professional editor, I consider myself competent and confident with the English language. Examples of my work are in my gallery; more recent material can be found on my storyblog. I've been published twice, once as Veritas in FANG volume 3 from Bad Dog Books, and in somewhat more mainstream press in Queer Fish volume 2 by Pink Narcissus Press, under my own name. I've completed NaNoWriMo three times, and believe I am fairly skilled at striking a balance between clarity and imagery with words.
(I am not affiliated with either publisher, nor do these services have anything whatsoever to do with them.)
Professional proofreading services can run up above $3 per 250 words for 7-day turnaround – well beyond what most people can justify who just want their work to be cleaned up to post online. I will be offering a much more affordable service: Per 500 words in the initial submission (a little under a full 8 1/2” x 11” page in 12 pt), basic proofreading will be $0.25 CAD. This is for the simplest brand of editing – checking for spelling/grammar mistakes, misuse of homophones, tense consistency, and the like. Copy editing – including a look at word choice, paragraph flow, and overall consistency of style as well as proofreading – will be $0.45. In either case, explicit sexual material will carry a $0.10/500 wd surcharge; merely suggestive material, or material which fades to black without going into detail, will not be subject to this.
Rounding on the word count will be to the nearest 500 words. If it lands exactly on an odd multiple of 250, it will go to the nearest 1000 words. The exception to this is that any piece, however small, will be counted as at least one increment of 500. To reiterate, the word counts will be for the initial submission, not the revised file, whether the count goes up or down.
I have yet to get a feel for the time and effort involved in this process, so rates may change – up or down – as time goes on. Refunds will not be granted due to subsequent price adjustments, nor will rates be adjusted upwards retroactively; once I give a quote and it is accepted, that price will stand. Also until I get a feel for how much volume I can process, I will only guarantee a 7-day turnaround on material up to 10,000 words long; while I will try to complete any submitted work sooner rather than later, right now anything in excess of 10k words will have another 7 days added to the estimate per 10,000 words - for instance, a 25,000 word piece will have an estimated 3-week turnaround. Again, I'll try to finish faster; just be advised that it may take some additional time.
Basic proofing should be easy enough to do for any English-language material. However, copy editing takes more involvement in the material. I reserve the right to refuse to copy-edit a piece if its content makes me too uncomfortable to go into that much detail. My expertise is with prose fiction; while I can still do basic proofreading on academic writing and the like, for anything more involved you will need to employ someone more immersed in the field.
Poetry is not suitable or eligible for this service; a single word different can greatly affect the feel of a carefully-crafted poem, and poetry is not a field in which I consider myself skilled.
Please state with the submission if you want a particular dialect of English to be used. If I see Canadian/UK English forms predominant, odds are I’ll stick to those, with my default otherwise being US English as perhaps the most widely-used; but it’s better to state clearly if you want a particular one to be in place. If it hasn’t come up by then, I will include this query when offering a quote (see below).
If you want to employ my services, please send me a note and I will give you my contact information, with further discussion to take place by email. I will accept documents in Rich Text Format (*.rtf), OpenDocument format (*.odt), or MS Word (*.doc, *.docx), though if Word format proves troublesome I may ask for it to be saved in another format. I will also accept work through Google Drive. In all cases, I will take a word count locally (as all word counters do not use the same algorithm, my count may differ somewhat from yours; I use LibreOffice). If you have asked for copy editing, I will look over the material and determine if I am willing to do so or not. I will provide a quote at this time. If you accept the quote and tell me to go ahead, then and only then will I start work, with the revisions to be completed within seven days. I will include a sample of the revisions with my statement that the work is done, with the full revised document to be sent once payment is received.
At this time, I can only accept payment through PayPal. Payment is to be rendered on receiving notice that the work is complete; I will not withdraw funds prior to this time. I would prefer payment not be remitted until then, for sake of easier bookkeeping.
If you know any (other) writers who may be interested in this service, feel free to direct their attention here.
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to doing business.
-Veritas
Although I am not a professional editor, I consider myself competent and confident with the English language. Examples of my work are in my gallery; more recent material can be found on my storyblog. I've been published twice, once as Veritas in FANG volume 3 from Bad Dog Books, and in somewhat more mainstream press in Queer Fish volume 2 by Pink Narcissus Press, under my own name. I've completed NaNoWriMo three times, and believe I am fairly skilled at striking a balance between clarity and imagery with words.
(I am not affiliated with either publisher, nor do these services have anything whatsoever to do with them.)
Professional proofreading services can run up above $3 per 250 words for 7-day turnaround – well beyond what most people can justify who just want their work to be cleaned up to post online. I will be offering a much more affordable service: Per 500 words in the initial submission (a little under a full 8 1/2” x 11” page in 12 pt), basic proofreading will be $0.25 CAD. This is for the simplest brand of editing – checking for spelling/grammar mistakes, misuse of homophones, tense consistency, and the like. Copy editing – including a look at word choice, paragraph flow, and overall consistency of style as well as proofreading – will be $0.45. In either case, explicit sexual material will carry a $0.10/500 wd surcharge; merely suggestive material, or material which fades to black without going into detail, will not be subject to this.
Rounding on the word count will be to the nearest 500 words. If it lands exactly on an odd multiple of 250, it will go to the nearest 1000 words. The exception to this is that any piece, however small, will be counted as at least one increment of 500. To reiterate, the word counts will be for the initial submission, not the revised file, whether the count goes up or down.
I have yet to get a feel for the time and effort involved in this process, so rates may change – up or down – as time goes on. Refunds will not be granted due to subsequent price adjustments, nor will rates be adjusted upwards retroactively; once I give a quote and it is accepted, that price will stand. Also until I get a feel for how much volume I can process, I will only guarantee a 7-day turnaround on material up to 10,000 words long; while I will try to complete any submitted work sooner rather than later, right now anything in excess of 10k words will have another 7 days added to the estimate per 10,000 words - for instance, a 25,000 word piece will have an estimated 3-week turnaround. Again, I'll try to finish faster; just be advised that it may take some additional time.
Basic proofing should be easy enough to do for any English-language material. However, copy editing takes more involvement in the material. I reserve the right to refuse to copy-edit a piece if its content makes me too uncomfortable to go into that much detail. My expertise is with prose fiction; while I can still do basic proofreading on academic writing and the like, for anything more involved you will need to employ someone more immersed in the field.
Poetry is not suitable or eligible for this service; a single word different can greatly affect the feel of a carefully-crafted poem, and poetry is not a field in which I consider myself skilled.
Please state with the submission if you want a particular dialect of English to be used. If I see Canadian/UK English forms predominant, odds are I’ll stick to those, with my default otherwise being US English as perhaps the most widely-used; but it’s better to state clearly if you want a particular one to be in place. If it hasn’t come up by then, I will include this query when offering a quote (see below).
If you want to employ my services, please send me a note and I will give you my contact information, with further discussion to take place by email. I will accept documents in Rich Text Format (*.rtf), OpenDocument format (*.odt), or MS Word (*.doc, *.docx), though if Word format proves troublesome I may ask for it to be saved in another format. I will also accept work through Google Drive. In all cases, I will take a word count locally (as all word counters do not use the same algorithm, my count may differ somewhat from yours; I use LibreOffice). If you have asked for copy editing, I will look over the material and determine if I am willing to do so or not. I will provide a quote at this time. If you accept the quote and tell me to go ahead, then and only then will I start work, with the revisions to be completed within seven days. I will include a sample of the revisions with my statement that the work is done, with the full revised document to be sent once payment is received.
At this time, I can only accept payment through PayPal. Payment is to be rendered on receiving notice that the work is complete; I will not withdraw funds prior to this time. I would prefer payment not be remitted until then, for sake of easier bookkeeping.
If you know any (other) writers who may be interested in this service, feel free to direct their attention here.
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to doing business.
-Veritas
