sighting & signing update

For those of you who might be attending, or know someone who might be attending, I will be signing BURNING BRIDGES (and anything else put in front of me) at Book Expo America in Manhattan, June 1st at 11am.

I will, apparently, be sharing the time slot with Caridad Piñeiro, Heather Graham, L.A. Banks, and Donna Hill. *facepalm* I'll be the one with the t-shirt that says "no, you don't know me. want a book anyway?"

(for those of you who don't follow such things, Heather Graham is a NYT and USA Today bestseller, award-winning author with over a hundred books to her credit, mostly in romantic suspense and various supernatural-friendly genres. I am not even close to being in the league next door to a league that's close to hers, in terms of name recognition)

(no subject)

I am currently freelance-editing a novel.

In that novel (yes, it's romance), the author uses "his cock thickened" far more often than can be read with a straight face.

Let this be a wake up call for some, and a reminder for others (myself included). Once we use a phrase, it tends to stick with us the entire project. This is not always a good thing.

Re-read your work. Out loud, if possible. Keep a highlighter in hand, if you're working on hardcopy, and one finger on the 'text color' command if you're working in phosphors. Mark the repeating phrase every time you see it, once you become aware of it. Then go through and change at least half of them to something else.

The project will thank you for it, later.

So will the editor.

a freelance editing Q&A

in comments, fakefrenchie asked: When you give an estimate for freelance editing of a novel, do you give a per hour rate and estimate the time it will take you to do the job? If so, what happens if you have to take more time because the novel needs a lot of work. If not, do you give a bulk rate for doing the edits for the whole book and hope that it will take you less time than you thought?

I'm quite curious as to how other people do the estimate deal, so any of you out there who do this for a living, feel free to chime in.


For global edits (aka 'revision letters') and line-editing, I have an hourly rate, and give an estimated costing up-front, based on expected hours required for the project. After *cough* many years of doing this, I know within a few hours how long an average-length genre novel of middling competence and complexity will take me to work through, and I give my quote based on that. Half the quote is due when the work begins, and the finalized half is due on completion. If I am doing both a revisions read/global edit and a line edit, I can cut a few hours off the total because some of that overlaps.

If the book is in worse shape, or requires additional work (research, or consults with the author) then the extra time is added to the final payment.

Most of my corporate clients have an agreed-upon flat fee, but those projects are usually in pretty good shape when they come to me (and if they're not, the managing editor knows this, and pays me more). It works out to about the same, on a per-hour basis, as my individual clients (and yes, I do give SFWA-member discounts).

I also do developmental editing (working with an author who has an idea but no structure), which is also billed hourly, and submission evaluations (vetting the package) and copy-writing (back/flap copy, ad copy, etc) for a flat fee.

Whew. I should just cut-and-paste this into my new brochures. If I ever actually had time to do them up....