A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but call editing “quality control” and you can double your proofreading fee!
That was my take-away from the annual salary survey by Canada’s Registered Graphic Designers, over a decade ago. In one report, this annual survey even labelled this role as QC, with “proofreader” noted in brackets. Indeed, many quality control workers would recognize the tasks they do in the descriptions of editorial tasks.
In graphic design firms, ‘proofreaders’ were paid an average of $54.40 an hour, back in 2013.* They billed out those services to clients at an average of $88 per hour, then. In 2023, copyeditors (across industries) were paid an average annual salary of $79,840 (equivalent roughly to $40/hr if billing 40 hrs/week).
Another insight we should take from this is that what you earn is not the same as what you charge. Freelancers often forget that they are in business and not only have to cover overhead, wages and benefits, but it is also well within reason to earn a profit. Ask your bank, ask your accountant, ask the Canada Revenue Agency—it is a reasonable expectation to earn a profit. [Read my previous post about setting your rates.]
Hold this in contrast to the 2013 salary survey from the Editors’ Association of Canada. The biggest portion of respondents were charging less than $40 per hour for proofreading. Most respondents were freelancers, and the largest segment had over 10 years on the job. We’re not talking about editors in entry-level jobs.
UPDATE: Also see the CIEP minimum pay recommendations and the 2024 Canadian Book Publishing Industry Salary Survey from the Canadian Book Publishers Association which reported copyeditors’ salaries averaging $55,000. They give salary averages for 7 other types of “editor” too.
Who you work for matters too (non-profit, corporate, publishers, etc.), as does any corollary subject or medium (e.g., funding applications or websites) expertise you bring to the work, but that’s a discussion for another post.
What do you call your editing services?
*Note that each year RGD investigate slightly different parameters, so data in their reports is not immediately comparable across years.
Sprouting coins image by Nattanan Kanchanaprat from Pixabay
