I didn't know where to put the thread. Does anyone know how much should it cost to edit for publication on a "technical" magazine a ~300.000 word text and how long should it take? Thanks. P.S.: I need the info to make a public offer, in Spain. Just in case some of you actually work as independent editors, in Spanish.
Google technical editor fees Spain. You'll get informatiuon faster than asking here, and probably more accurate too.
I found quotes in English, but not Spanish. Anyway I just need a reference but different sites give me quotes from 1000$ for 100k words to three times that. Argg. I'll keep looking. And, for some reason, all Spanish sites do the "send us a mail for a quote on your project" thing. ffs, just put the prices on your web and stop trying to squeeze the last penny from each client. [EDIT: Ok, I surrender. It's harder than I expected. I'm getting a wild range from 2€ to 20€ per page, so I suppose deeper investigation is required. I hope I don't end up doing it myself. ]
then i don't understand your question... it will obviously take months to do it, since the issues aren't all going to be edited at the same time... as for cost, you should choose a fee that falls somewhere in the middle of the going rate there... i also don't know what you mean by 'make a public offer'... are you going to advertise your services as an editor of spanish mss/magazines, or what?...
That would be a standard magazine with contents that are decided each month. In this case, most of the contents for the entire year are decided in advance and created. No. What I meant is that the project comes from the MARM (Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Medio Rural y Marino; Ministry of the Environment) and most works that aren't done internally have to be offered in public auction. I don't have that kind of vocabulary in English but, essentially what I need is to know how much should I expect to be asked for editing the text, to write the public offer. Then, any enterprise can reply to the offer and an inspector chooses the best reply. [Edit: I suppose all governments must have a version of that same protocol. A way of guaranteeing that the politicians aren't selecting who will do a government job for any reason but price and quality.]
'be asked for' is confused/confusing... are you going to be doing the editing, or are you the one who will be paying an editor? are you looking for an amount you should offer to pay, or the amount you want to be paid?
I was going to be paying an editor. I was looking for the amount I should offer to pay. Anyway, I was unable to reach a standard price so I officially suggested evaluating the offers by similitude of previous jobs they may have done to this one, and only then price. My "official" stand on the matter (which may be very wrong, but I've got to have one) is that editing is like translating and there's no baseline expected quality but a wide range of offered qualities from which one has to choose by taking into account the text one wants edited. Or, in other words, that if you take the cheapest one, you'll end up with a bad result and little means to challenge it. From here on, I wash my hands (do you have such expression in English?) about the project and let's hope they select a decent editor.
The English expression is "I wash my hands of the project." Its origins are in Pontius Pilate washing his hands after authorizing Jesus' crucifiction. My impression was you wanted to bid to offer your services as an editor to the magazine, not to hire an editor. I've written it many times, it is not worth the expense to hire an editor unless you are already an established author with an extended publishing contract. In that case, you can seek out an editor who understands your style and remains true to it while making only the corrections that clarify your original intent. As always, you need to be capable of the same edits yourself. You shouldn't rely on an editor to fix your writing shortcomings. A professional editor should be a time-saving assistant to help you meet tight schedules and to help keep you honest under schedule pressure.
It wasn't for personal use. I needed an editor for a project in which, at this point, I'm no longer interested, because most people in my company flocks around the single digit IQs. My working environment is quickly changing right now, and will probably be even less stable next week, so what was urgent some days ago is no longer important now. Sorry for the inconvenience.
