You’re submitting your precious manuscript, which you’ve spent hours and hours on and into which you’ve poured your heart and soul, to your copyeditor or proofreader. When should you expect to get it back? Here are a few things that could impact the amount of time it takes your copyeditor/proofreader to get it back to you.
Other Projects
Copyeditors and proofreaders, just like other freelancers, will try to build up a steady stream of work, and therefore income. So, your copyeditor or proofreader may have other projects that were already on her to-do list before yours. It’s highly advisable that you seek out a copyeditor or proofreader several weeks or months before you actually intend to send the manuscript. That way, your copyeditor or proofreader can set aside time in her schedule and will know to turn away other projects that would have conflicting deadlines.
The other side to that is that it’s important for you to meet your promised delivery date in return so that the copyeditor or proofreader did not pass up on projects that could have brought her income and is instead sitting there with nothing to do, waiting for you to send it. In other words, please be considerate. Communicate early and often—both to find someone that you can work with and if something comes up that’s going to prevent you from delivering it on time. The earlier, the better, in both cases, so that adjustments can be made.
Another consideration is the copyeditor’s/proofreader’s personal schedule. She may have other things going on besides editing. Perhaps she has another job to make ends meet or has family she has to care for or is very involved in her community or homeschools her children. I know that, as the author, that’s not your problem and may not be information you have available to you. I’m just pointing it out to emphasize that your copyeditor or proofreader is a person with personal needs and obligations as well.
Your copyeditor or proofreader should be able to estimate how much time it’s going to take her. If you have a particular deadline, be sure to communicate that information. Just know that if your deadline is short and therefore requires sacrifices of time on behalf of the copyeditor/proofreader (giving up other projects, personal time, marketing time, etc.), it’ll cost you more.
Length and Difficulty of Manuscript
Of course, the longer your manuscript is, the longer it’s going to take to edit or proofread. That’s a given. People tend to underestimate how long it takes an editor to read through a manuscript. Keep in mind that you hired your copyeditor or proofreader to catch all of the tiny mistakes which requires careful reading. Your copyeditor or proofreader isn’t going to be able to zoom through it at the speed of a reader. Also, every time the copyeditor or proofreader has to stop to either make a change or do research adds seconds or minutes, and that time adds up.
Additionally, the more difficult the material, the longer it will take.
If you have a lot of facts in your book, the copyeditor is going to check all of them that she can. That research takes a significant amount of time. I recently worked on a manuscript that mentioned author after author in one section, along with personal information about those authors; philosopher after philosopher in another section, along with information about their theories; and historical fact after historical fact in another section, along with names of particular people and places. There were a lot of facts! Each time I got to one of those sections, my speed slowed to a crawl. I needed to look up every author, philosopher, person, place, book, theory—whatever was mentioned—and make sure the spellings were accurate as well as that the portrayal of the facts was reasonably accurate. Perhaps my speed was ten pages per hour for most of the manuscript, but for those sections, I was probably at about a page and a half per hour.
The worse shape the spelling, grammar, and punctuation are in, the longer the copyedit or proofread is going to take as well. For example, translated materials often take longer because there are a lot of things that don’t quite sound right to a native speaker that the translator doesn’t catch.
Your Responsiveness
Your responsiveness to your editor can also greatly impact the speed of the copyedit or proofread. If your copyeditor or proofreader asks you a question, please try to respond to her as quickly as possible. If it’s a simple fact check that your copyeditor wasn’t able to verify herself, such as quote from a book that she doesn’t own and isn’t freely available on the internet, that’s easy to return back to later. On the other hand, if it’s a question about consistency in a story, that could impact quite a lot and may be preventing her from doing any further work until she hears back from you.
I recognize that, as the author, it may be frustrating for you to get questions from your copyeditor or proofreader. It may feel like criticism each time you get a question in your inbox, like you’ve done many things wrong. It may just be annoying to keep getting inquiries. Keep in mind that your copyeditor is just trying to make your writing as good as possible. A question is often just a question; there’s no further meaning behind it. Try not to attach feelings to it.
Copyediting and proofreading are often a collaboration with the author. We can’t be in your head when you’re writing it, so we don’t know what your intentions were. As a fresh set of eyes reading it, we can point out to you where things don’t flow well, or where the story is inconsistent, or where we’re not sure what was intended by a particular sentence. We ask questions to get a better understanding of your intentions so that we can help get your manuscript to where you wanted it to be. That’s why you hired a copyeditor or proofreader after all. The more responsive and collaborative you are, the better your work will be in the end.
Sometimes, that collaboration leads to the copyeditor/proofreader to ask you to do a rewrite of something, for example, if there was inconsistency in the story. That request essentially puts the copyedit or proofread on hold. The sooner you can get the rewrite back to the copyeditor or proofreader, the sooner she can finish your project.
Don’t Change Your Manuscript!
Sometimes authors can’t stand to leave their projects alone for a while and may ask for a common location to view how the copyedit or proofread is coming along in real time or may ask for constant updates to be sent. Or, the author may still be making changes on his own copy of the manuscript while the copyeditor or proofreader is working on her copy.
Above all, do not make changes to the manuscript while your copyeditor or proofreader is working on it. You’re going to end up with multiple versions, which is a mess to untangle. Plus, then the copyeditor or proofreader becomes unsure what she’s already viewed and what she hasn’t and will have to start over.
If you must have real-time access to the manuscript as its being proofread or copyedited, then please only view it. Do not make any changes. Do not add any comments. Don’t make any judgments. On my first pass through a manuscript, I will often leave comments to myself to remind me to follow up on something. Those comments will be cleaned up once I get through the manuscript the first time. For instance, I may need to know something that happens in the story later on to know whether something needs to be changed or not, so I leave a comment to note the location where I need to return and reevaluate. If you start adding comments or making changes, you may be wasting time on something that was perfectly fine as it was.
Also, if you have real-time access, keep in mind that your work hours may not be your copyeditor’s or proofreader’s work hours. A lot of freelancers enjoy freelancing because of the flexibility it gives them in when they work. They might be night owls and work at 2 a.m., or they might have pretty busy weeks but can get a lot of work done on weekends. Don’t panic if you don’t see any progress during “normal” work hours.
If you need constant updates, keep in mind that you’re adding administrative time to the copyedit or proofread, which means your project is going to take longer. Additionally, if you ask for a copy of the manuscript as it stands at that time, you may feel the urge to make changes or add comments. If so, as I’ve already mentioned, resist the urge!
For version control, it’s essential that only one person is working on a manuscript at a time. While your manuscript is in the hands of your copyeditor or proofreader, please don’t make changes to another version. If she sends you an updated version with her changes thus far and asks you for a rewrite, leave Track Changes (Word) or Suggestions (Google) on so that it will be easier to see what has changed.
Time
Now that you understand the factors that can impact time, how much time will it take? Here are some estimates to help you gauge the amount of time it will take depending on the level of service.
Note that I’m using an estimate of five hours per day, five days per week, which could vary. Why only five hours per day? As freelancers, we must spend time marketing to make sure we have steady work. Also, personal schedules may get in the way, as I mentioned above. Finally, sometimes it’s difficult to sufficiently concentrate on such detailed work for more time than that per day, and the work would suffer if the copyeditor or proofreader worked on it for more time than that.
Basic Copyediting
In my “How Much Does Copyediting or Proofreading Cost?” blog last month, I indicated that in one hour of Basic Copyediting, five to ten standard manuscript pages or 1,250–2,500 words can be covered. Personally, I always make two complete passes through the material because I can often find things on the second pass that I didn’t notice on the first pass because I didn’t know how the rest of the story would end up or because I was focused on the bigger picture. I believe most copyeditors do the same. However, the second pass takes less time since most of the cleanup is already done. There’s also inevitably some collaboration with the author that requires some revision. Assuming the author is a quick collaborator and requires essentially no extra time, a one hundred thousand word manuscript could take between two and four weeks to complete. Consider the things I mentioned before about what could impact time to determine where your manuscript is likely to fall within that range.
Heavy Copyediting
In one hour of Heavy Copyediting, two to five standard manuscript pages or 500–1,250 words can be covered. Most copyeditors will do a second pass on a heavy copyedit as well, but the second pass may take a bit longer than it would for a Basic Copyedit since the copyedit on the first round likely required more changes. Again, assuming quick collaboration with the author, a one hundred thousand word manuscript could take between three and eight weeks to complete. Consider the things I mentioned before about what could impact time to determine where your manuscript is likely to fall within that range. Somewhere in the middle is probably the average.
Proofreading
In one hour of Proofreading, nine to thirteen standard manuscript pages or 2,250–3,250 words can be covered. Proofreaders may or may not do a second pass through a manuscript. Since they’re not looking for the same things as copyeditors, they usually catch the details they need on the first pass. Assuming that there was quick collaboration with the author, if any was needed, a one hundred thousand word manuscript could take about two weeks or a little less.
Website Copyediting
Website copyediting can vary, of course. If the copyeditor is also checking the functionality of the site, it will take longer. It also depends on how much material is on the site. Therefore, how long website copyediting should take is really difficult to judge. If it’s important to you to know an estimate of the number of hours it will take, time yourself reading through the site at a relatively slow pace, then double or triple it to allow time for making or marking changes and the extra time it takes to be detailed and check any facts.
These timeframes and considerations should give you some rough guidelines for how long it should take. As always, communicate with your copyeditor or proofreader about whether there are projects in front of yours, any deadlines you might have and whether they’re flexible, and setting up communication expectations. In addition, be as flexible as possible. Things may come up in your copyedit that require more revisions or more fact checking than expected, and it may take more time than originally estimated. While working through your manuscript, communication and collaboration between the author and copyeditor or proofreader are crucial.