The world needs your book.

I’m obsessed with books. I’m guessing you are, too, if you’re writing one. And congratulations on that, by the way. Writing an entire book (or article or any piece of writing) takes incredible commitment and discipline. To reach the point that you’re ready for an editor is a huge accomplishment. As of January 2026, I’m no longer taking freelance clients, but the information on my page might help you think through the services you need.

After so much hard work, you want to make sure that the work you share with the world, whether you self-publish it or submit it to traditional publishers, is as good as it can be. As a freelance editor, I offered three main services to authors.

Manuscript evaluation

You’ve slaved for weeks and months over your book. But if you're the only one who's seen it, how can you know if it’s ready for prime time? In a manuscript evaluation, I would read a book cover to cover and provide a written critique. For fiction, I looked at elements like plot, character, dialogue, and setting. In non-fiction, I focused on things like organization, consistency, completeness, and clarity. This was the most budget-friendly editing service I offered, and the right place to start for a new manuscript. 

stylistic editing and copy editing

Once you’re satisfied with the overall story or structure of your book, you’re ready for a much more detailed edit, to go through your manuscript line by line, both to make sure your word choice and sentence structure really sing (stylistic editing), and to address issues of spelling, grammar, punctuation, consistency, and other mechanics (copy editing). For efficiency and to keep costs down, I typically recommended doing these as a single step, but they could also be done separately.

Proofreading
 

A lot of people confuse copy editing with proofreading. Proofreading is actually the very last step in the editorial process; it’s the final quality check after layout and before publication. A proofreader looks for any issues that cropped up through the design/layout process, including text inadvertently left out, unfortunate page breaks, headings not aligned, incorrect images used ... accidental weirdness of any kind. They also check for any errors that were missed in previous steps. 

See Types of Editing, where I go on at great length about each of these.

pricing

You won’t find a price list on my website. I know, frustrating, right? But here’s the thing. Every piece of writing is completely different—yours may need only the lightest of copy edits, while the next author’s needs a very deep, detailed edit. Until an editor sees it, theres no way for them to know how much work will go into it or how long it will take. 

To quote on a project, I often did a free sample edit on a short portion of the manuscript. This not only helped me to understand what it needed and build a quote, but it also helped the author know what to expect from me, so they could have confidence that they were getting the careful, thoughtful work that they were looking for.