Hello Malik,
I'm about to hire a developmental and copy editor soon. I'd like you, if you're willing, to PM me your agreement with this current editor and the previous one. I'd like to know what the going rate is, and what's to be expected.
Hello Malik,
I'm about to hire a developmental and copy editor soon. I'd like you, if you're willing, to PM me your agreement with this current editor and the previous one. I'd like to know what the going rate is, and what's to be expected.
The "going rate" is all over the map. I have seen quotes for a developmental/line edit of a 100,000 word novel anywhere from around $1000 to $6000 US.
he might want to rethink that whole head hopping in the same paragraph thing...
This.
I got one quote toward the top end of that spectrum but I didn't take him seriously. Most quotes for non-NYT-bestseller-sporting independent editors came in between $1200-2200 for 96,000 words. That's for a few passes of line and content editing and a final polish for typos.
However, like infodumps, head-hopping is common in every other genre -- especially in thrillers and literary fiction, which are where I do most of my reading. (Imagine anything by Tom Clancy without infodumps; or Jane Eyre or Tom Jones if there was a law that the author needed to start a new chapter for every perspective. You couldn't get through one conversation.)
Also like infodumps, head-hopping is an advanced craft, and really hard to do well. It takes years of practice and study -- and incorporating authors who excel at it into your voice -- until it flows right. For that reason, I'd rather have an editor who knows a good POV shift from a bad one than an editor who forbids them altogether because fantasy. YMMV.
And fantasy readers may hate my stuff. That's fine. I'm not writing fantasy, which I think has been my problem all along. I'm writing action/espionage thrillers that happen to revolve around the portal fantasy trope.
Anyway. I hope to have the first book out by fall and I'm sitting here beside a stack of notepads and beat sheets for the second. We'll see what happens.