Where to Find Experienced Editorial Professionals

A publishing-related e-mail list to which I subscribe is discussing where to find editorial professionals—copyeditors, proofreaders, book designers, book cover designers, indexers, and page layout professionals.

The person who brought up the subject has her own small publishing business, and as a businessperson, she's looking to save money. She recommended that those in need of editorial professionals seek out web sites such as Elance.com to find low prices. But can you, as an author who wants to self-publish, get great editorial help there? No. This is what I wrote to the list:

In general, you won't find the most professional or experienced editorial professionals on Elance.com [or on other sites like it, such as Guru.com], because the way Elance is set up encourages freelancers to outbid one another, to the point of lowballing. Those rates may seem reasonable to you, but they're starvation pay for freelancers. With the rates that most projects go for on Elance, you'll often wind up with the inexperienced newbies and the less-talented freelancers whom few other people will hire. You'll be paying Walmart prices and expecting to get Saks Fifth Avenue work, but guess what you'll often get instead.

To put it another way, would you want your brain surgeon to have graduated at the bottom of her class, or would you want the most competent brain surgeon you can find?

Places to find more experienced and better qualified editorial professionals include the following:

• The membership directory of the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA)



• The EFA Job List, where you post a job description and get responses sent to you



• The Directory of Copyediting-L Freelancers



• The job board of Copyediting newsletter, where you post a job description and get responses sent to you



• The Manuscript Services page of the Web site of the Council of Science Editors



• The roster and searchable database of the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences



• The Database of Editors of the Bay Area Forum



• The directory of the San Diego Professional Editors Network



• The job postings page of the web site of the Society for Technical Communication (STC)



• LinkedIn, a networking site for professionals



• The Indexer Locator of the American Society for Indexing (ASI)



• The ASI Jobs Hotline, where you post a job description and get responses sent to you



• The membership directory and the job board of the Editors' Association of Canada



• The membership directory of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP; in the UK)

These are some common rates you should expect to pay for various kinds of editorial services:

• From the EFA (U.S.)



• From the National Writers Union (U.S.); or see this



• From the STC (U.S.)



• From the SfEP (UK)



• From the National Union of Journalists (UK)

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