How to Hire
a Freelance Copyeditor
Where to Start
- If you’re a student, ask your professor or faculty supervisors for their permission to hire a copy-editor. UT has no official policies against hiring editors, but individual faculty members may object to this practice. Sec. 11-402. Academic Dishonesty of UT’s Institutional Rules does not mention copy-editing as a prohibited conduct. However, if your supervisor tells you not to use an editor and you hire one anyway, then this would be a violation of “failing to comply with instructions” (11-402(c)(2)). So, the best practice is to make sure your supervisor is OK with you hiring a copy-editor.
- Read Wendy Laura Belcher’s overview, How to Hire and Work with an Academic Copyeditor.
- Send query emails early in your writing process, even before your project is ready to review. Ask editors about rates, time frames, and options for reviewing your chapters one at a time.
Standard Editorial Rates
“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… is 250 words.” (source)
- Editing
- Basic copyediting: 5-10 ms pgs/hr, $30-40/hr
- Heavy copyediting: 2–5 ms pgs/hr, $40–50/hr
- Developmental editing: 1–5 pgs/hr, $45–55/hr
- Substantive or line editing: 1–6 ms pgs/hr, $40–60/hr
- Other services
- Proofreading: 9-13 ms pgs/hr, $30-35/hr
- Translating: 300-500 wds/hr, $40-50/hr
- Wendy Belcher’s Suggestions
- “The average rate at which copyeditors edit is 4 pages (or 1,000 words) per hour.”
- “First, review the manuscript… If your footnotes have never been spell-checked, spell-check them. If your references are not standardized, fix them…. Once you have fixed what you can, identify exactly how many pages are in your manuscript (don’t guess, divide the total electronic word count by 250 words). Divide this figure by 4 (pages an hour) to arrive at the likely total cost of copyediting.”
- 200-page dissertation = 50 hours x $30 = $1500.
Freelance Editors
Note: We only feature editors who have worked at the UWC in the past. These editors are not currently affiliated with the UWC.
Lynn Cowles
Former UWC Consultant
Email: cowles5966@gmail.com
Education:
PhD and MA in English, UT Austin; BA in English, Virginia Commonwealth University
Experience:
Fifteen years of writing coaching and thousands of pages edited for diverse writers and projects! I specialize in:
- Academics: scholarly publications, dissertations, curricula;
- Businesses: internal and external communications; web/social media content;
- Professionals: books, industry pieces; and
- Nonprofits: grants, reports, etc.
Experience includes working for academic journals, web development offices, and popular and academic publishers. Writing partnerships are unique—let’s see what ours looks like together! Please email with project details for pricing.
Melanie Haupt
Former UWC Consultant
Phone: (512) 293-2853
Email: mkhaupt@gmail.com
Website: drhediting.com
Education:
PhD in English, UT Austin; MA in English, University of Colorado Boulder; BA in English, UT Austin
Experience:
I earned my PhD in English at the University of Texas at Austin, where I taught literature and rhetoric and writing classes from 2005–2012. I have taught rhetoric and composition, American Studies, and Capstone at St. Edward’s University. I have extensive experience with proofreading, copyediting, and project editing and can help you get your college application letter, thesis, dissertation, monograph, and manuscript ready for submission.
Sara Saylor
Former UWC Consultant
Email: sarasaylor@gmail.com
Website: https://www.sarasaylor.com
Education:
PhD in English, UT Austin; MA in English, UT Austin; BA in English, University of South Carolina
Experience:
I have 15 years of experience supporting academic writers as a consultant, editor, and teacher. I specialize in editing journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, and thesis projects in the social sciences, humanities, and education. I offer substantive feedback to improve your manuscript’s clarity, flow, and argumentation, as well as one-on-one consultations to support your work at any stage of the writing process.