Freelance proofread of a book: How much?

[magores]

A friend of mine is writing a series of 8 books. She has investors lined up to produce them. The books will be in English and Chinese. They will be very short books with "learner-level" English. She has asked me to proofread the English portion.

My question is: What is the going rate for freelance proofreading? Does it go by page count or word count?

Obviously, I will adjust accordingly to account for the fact that she is a very good friend, but I need a price point to start from.

Thanks for your input,

[jobin]

Are you reading English and chinese, or only looking at the english? Proofreading on the surface, would seem much easier than 'correcting' or 'modifying' which can be difficult on chinglish papers. 'See Tom run! Run, Tom, run'. That is correct and quite simple of course. is that the level you will read? Try working by time. Engish tutors get from 100 to 200 per hour but highly variable. What can you do in one hour? you won't get rich! hey, ask for shares in tomorrow's profit and work for free now. the hard part is actually seeing what is there on the page, not what you expect to read as much of common reading, and speech, is repetition.

[Lu]

I usually prefer to get paid by word, since then everybody knows from the start what the price is going to be (I also phrase it as: 'it's X words, Y cents per word, so that would be Z dollar/euro/whatever. Do you agree?'). I don't know the going rate for proofreading English, but in cases like this I usually look around on the internet and see what commercial companies are charging.

I hope this is of any use. Good luck!

[Scoobyqueen]

I use several proofreaders in Europe. One charges 35 Euros an hour and the other one charges 50 pounds an hour. The first one is a journalists who has been working with our company for many years and he is doing me a favour in return for accommodation at events etc. He is a specialist in the area that he is proofreading. The other one is based in the UK and has an outstanding track record as a journalist for a top magazine in the field which means he can command more. Well now you mention it, I should ask him to reduce his rates given that the downturn has hit the UK worse than other places A third one is a French journalist and she charges 35 Euros per page for straightforward proofreads and 75 Euros per page for editing it into a smooth French style that appeals to the media.

[Hüsker Dü]

Saw this ad for "website contents revision" in the beijinger classifieds. I'm assuming that falls into the category of proofreading. The pay seems ridiculously low:

Time- based fee, 35 RMB per hour with 3000 words/hour

.

[Erbse]

There are two types of proofreading:

1.) You just read and mark mistakes, without giving proper corrections

2.) You find mistakes and correct them.

The second is obviously more difficult and takes more time.

And then there is the question proofread to find what. Wrong facts. Wrong grammar. Logical errors in the story line. Bad style. All of them?

Another factor is the number of mistakes existent in the text. Ask for a sample page to get an estimate. Shouldn't be a problem if you are dealing with a friend.

A good source for help should be proz.com, although it is mostly aimed at translating.

About the price, it all depends on the desired quality, as you have seen on the examples already posted in this thread.

Are you able to deliver good quality? If yes, go for the job and ask for proper payment. Otherwise let someone else do it. A book in good quality can become a bestseller. Poor quality will translate into a low number of copies sold. A book is not a website.