Job Discussion Forums

Jack Walker · Joined: 23 Oct 2008 Posts: 412

A gentleman asked me to proofread his chemistry journal article submission.It is about 35 pages in length.He asked me what my fee is.

I've never proofread for a fee before. so I don't know what the going rate is?

Any advice?

lundjstuart · Joined: 01 Jul 2008 Posts: 211 Location: Warsaw, Poland

Jack Walker · Joined: 23 Oct 2008 Posts: 412

maniak · Joined: 06 Feb 2008 Posts: 194

50zl is really steep.

For proofreading if it is actually real proofreading and not correcting a google translation I take a base 15zl per 1200 letters (about a page). If a page requires serious revision I charge it as if translation. If its in a rush I take 1.5x or 2x the total.

lundjstuart · Joined: 01 Jul 2008 Posts: 211 Location: Warsaw, Poland

A girl asked me to correct her master's thesis, I only had 24 hours to do it and I worked for 14 of out of the 24 hours available. So, as a result, I charged a steep price so that she would turn me down but instead, took the bait and I was a couple K richer the next day! Laughing

scottie1113 · Joined: 25 Oct 2004 Posts: 375 Location: Gdansk

Proofreading lengthy professional articles is a major pain. I've done proofreading in tandem with two of my Polish teacher friends to compare the original Polish version with the translation, and twice they couldn't understand what the author was saying in Polish. The translation was worse.

Wait until you come across a 500 word sentence with weird irrelevant clauses stuck in at random and which seemingly refer to nothing and you'll see what I mean. Academicians are the worst. I won't do that again! Good luck, and let us know about your experience.

I don't remember what we charged but it seemed like a reasonable amount at the time. Even if we had charged four times as much it wouldn't have been worth it.

maniak · Joined: 06 Feb 2008 Posts: 194

I had one of those too, made 1500zl on a weekend Smile

dynow · Joined: 07 Nov 2006 Posts: 1080

i started a thread for this very reason back in September of last year.

i had over 100 pages to proofread. the first thing I did was ask the client to send me a page or two of the paper so I could see what I was getting myself into. like others said on this forum, proofreading is different than making lengthy revisions, it takes waaaaay more time and is waaaaay more frustrating. if you look at a page of the paper and it's mostly articles, the occasional verb tense, spelling error, etc., then you charge accordingly.

also, you need to find out how much correspondence you will need to have with the student during the whole thing. can you do it, submit it to that person, and be done with it, or will there be a never-ending email ping-pong asking why you did this and that? again, this adds time to the assignment.

so what I would recommend is to first ask the client what they expect from you EXACTLY.

i charged I think 17-18zl. per 2000 characters, not letters, meaning that includes spaces. i thought it would get turned down because of the total cost the paper added up to, but I got the job. fact of the matter is, if my client had gone to a translation agency they would have paid twice as much and certainly wouldn't have gotten all the correspondence time I offered during the process, and I made the client aware of that when I told them my price.

Jack Walker · Joined: 23 Oct 2008 Posts: 412

silesia · Joined: 19 May 2008 Posts: 16

I charge an hourly rate roughly equivalent to my teaching rate.They have to trust me when I tell them how long I took over their proofreading.I havent had any problems with this system to date.

Master Shake · Joined: 03 Nov 2006 Posts: 1202 Location: Colorado, USA

Henry_Cowell · Joined: 27 May 2005 Posts: 3352 Location: Berkeley

For any type of editing job, I ask to see some sample pages first. After seeing how those samples are written, I can make my own estimate of how much time the job will take for a complete edit. I then supply an hourly rate to the client, or I give the client a total fee -- both of these based on my past experience.

dynow · Joined: 07 Nov 2006 Posts: 1080

mastershake wrote:

Henry_Cowell · Joined: 27 May 2005 Posts: 3352 Location: Berkeley

Don't forget that "proofreading" to most people really means "editing." You are actually fixing things that the writer got wrong, whether it's a punctuation mark, subject-verb agreement, a complete sentence, or paragraph cohesion and transitions. It can be just a light edit, or it can be a substantive edit -- depending on the quality of the original writing.

Traditional "proofreading" is something different: comparing typeset pages to an original manuscript to make sure that nothing has been left out or keyboarded incorrectly. It's a very different kind of job.

victoriaw · Joined: 31 Jan 2011 Posts: 6

It's true, I had many misunderstandings with the terms 'proofreading', 'editing' and 'correction'. Generally what happens is that what needs to be corrected is punctuation errors, grammatical errors. Rarely discussions arise about the meanings and sentence construction. It is primarily about a second view on a text or document which the author has worked in.
It amazes me how different are the price ranges you mention, I think what does it change so much is the relation with the customer.

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