The hardest part of being a professional writer and freelance editor, aka a wordsmith for hire in the Writing Wild West?
Knowing your worth.
And I don't mean the esoteric type of knowing your worth (although that is arguably part of it, and some self-confidence in your skills never hurts), but more the "oh god what do I charge for my services?" kind of knowing your worth.
This is on my mind right now as I've spent the better part of the day crawling through various websites, blog posts, and PDF resources in a bid to find that answer. The thing is, I'm finally updating my rates after three years. Those numbers I decided on as a fresh-faced graduate just tiptoeing into the freelance writer/editor world no longer accurately represent me.
In the time since I struck out on my own, I've written 14 books across a variety of genres. I've edited and proofread hundreds of thousands of words in the form of website copy, academic essays and dissertations, sales letters, product descriptions, book blurbs, and blog posts. I've learned the most efficient way to create a manuscript outline. I've stayed up late, staring into the void of the unknown, asking myself why the hell I decided that becoming a professional grammar gremlin was a good idea. I've shrieked with delight when I landed a project I didn't think I'd get. I've cried as I watched the 20% service fee get deducted from my UpWork earnings. I've learned. I've grown.
How do you put a new price on all of that? How am I meant to reduce copious bowlfuls of experience, skill, and talent into the sweet, sticky sauce of a rate per word, hour, and day for each of my services? What is that delicious summation of time worth? By extension, it makes me ask what I, Elizabeth, writer and editor extraordinaire, is worth.
As it turns out, there's a lot of different sources saying a lot of different things. I went with the more reputable ones, like the Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders and the National Union of Journalists, then went sneaking through the websites of some other freelancers to get a feel for what others in my field are charging. After several hours, I've found numbers that I feel are both accurate in relation to the professional guidance as well as representing, well, my worth.
You can seek out my new rates for my current services on my services page. The website as a whole is getting a bit of a spruce up, so I'll be adding a page for my writing services, and updating most of the copy on the site to reflect this new era of my business.
And you know what? It'll 100% be worth it.