Editorial Rate Guidelines For Freelancers

The Editorial Freelancers Association's website summed up beautifully the fair market editorial rates for freelancers, which is just a set of basic pricing guidelines for which freelancers may charge clients or employers may pay freelancers. Of course rate may vary but its a good frame work to build reasonable rates. Below is their take on rates.

"Common editorial rates —regardless of whether a project is flat rate or hourly— tend to fall within the ranges indicated below. These should be used only as a rough guideline; rates vary considerably depending on the nature of the work, the time frame of the assignment, the degree of special expertise required, and other factors. The industry standard for a manuscript page, however, is a firm 250 words."
Type of Work
Estimated Pace
Range of Fees
Copy Editing, basic
5–10 ms pgs/hr
$25–40/hr
Copy Editing, heavy
2–5 ms pgs/hr
$35–50/hr
Substantive Line editing
1–6 ms pgs/hr
$40–65/hr
Developmental Editing
1–5 pgs/hr
$50–80/hr
Layout Newsletters
1–4 pgs/hr
$40–70/prn pg
Layout Books
6–10 pgs/hr
$45–85/hr
Indexing
8–20 prn pgs/hr
$35–65/hour$3.50–12/indexable prn pg
Project Management
NA
$9.00–20.00/prn pg $40–70/hr
Proofreading
5–10 ms pgs/hr
$25–35/hr
Researching
NA
$25-50/hr
Translating
300–500 wds/hr
20-50¢/wd
Writing
1–3 ms pgs/hr
$50–100/hr $1–$2/wd
Transcribing
variable
$3–$5/pg
NOTE: ms = manuscript, prn = printed, pg = page, hr = hour, wd = word
Updated: September 2008