I had started writing on Dreame..I think I'm going to remove that one paragraph from there XD
I'm a freelancer by profession - it's a perfectly valid form of work. It just needs someone to understand more than just the skills they're being hired for. Being a ghostwriter also means knowing how to negotiate rates, how to adjust client expectations around outlines, how to pitch according to a client's needs (some clients may want someone who can recreate their vision with the most accuracy, some want someone who'll create market-ready work so they can recoup their investment, and your pitch has to reflect that), how to communicate progress, how to make clear and achievable promises, how to network (freelancers get a lot of work by getting clients to bring them their friends), how to "stack" projects so that you'll have future work when you've completed your current project, etc. It's a lot of work to do it right, but that goes for any profession.
There's also a premium on speed, not just quality. I think that also needs to be drawn attention to. If someone wants something tomorrow - they should be prepared to pay top dollar. Quick turn around times where someone has to drop everything to make something work means more expensive.
Edited for aditional point: Also - some people will refuse to drop their standards either just to get things out faster because it could reflect on their work if there's a subpar product out there that they've worked on. Freelancers have to know what they're prepared to do as well and take into account their reputation. No one wants to become known as the "well, they get it done fast, but it's only alright if you can't get anyone else" freelancer.
These would be for smallish jobs. Write three thousand words, beta-read three thousand words, and so on.
The sliding scale of TIME, QUALITY, and RESOURCES applies here. At best, you can get two. If you want quality on short notice, as KR says, that requires higher pay. If you want to pay less, you're gonna be lower on a freelancer's priority list, and they're not going to feel incentivised to give anything more than the labour that pay reflects, etc.
I just read through the thread this topic references and oh my god it was a fascinating read. I still don't understand why the OP couldn't do the proofreading himself if it would take "10-15 minutes" and a primary schooler could do it. But I don't want spend too much time on that.
I want to say thank you to @MiloNelakho for this amazing advice! It is very much appreciated! and thanks to @KRWright too!
Considering that doing the math on their chapter output seemed to indicate they barely set aside time for anything other than writing, no wonder they attempted to outsource it.
This is important too. Your client can be a person of their word, but if it looks like they put themselves in burnout-inducing work, be careful so those expectations don't fall on you as well when delivering what you were asked to. Crunch culture in general gets perpetuated by a feeling of "well my boss does it, I should do it too" when the answer is that it's unhealthy for both.
I agree with you. The output volume he relayed to those in the thread seemed wildly unreasonable and unhealthy to me. And his reasoning for it, though understandable, wasn't enough for me to justify what he was doing and what he was asking for. Granted, by the time I read the thread the original post had been edited so I don't know if he gave a time frame he wanted the proofreading to be done in.
Also expecting people to do for free what he was paying some other guy hundreds and hundreds of dollars to do, and the guy being paid wasn't really doing his job. A victimizer and a victim at the same time.
Oh man I just read the thread this is based on and wow, I missed a juicy, juicy thread when I was asleep last night. What a ride that whole thread was.
1 month later
Here's one for various publishing houses for comics. Note that these are self-reported so the range may be different, but it's a good basis for an estimate nonetheless.
Keep in mind that this does not factor in things like royalties (for example, I think the person who said they got paid $0/page for writing was probably set up to receive royalties instead).
Another thing to note is that many comic publishers (perhaps even most, except for the largest ones) gladly accept unsolicited portfolio submissions from artists and pitches from creative partnerships (i.e. ideas that come with art) but do not accept unsolicited pitches from writers or writer portfolio submissions, so competition is WAY higher for writers than artists.
In that website, I found this phrase interesting: "tend to fall within the ranges indicated below." At various gig websites like Fivrr and Craigslist, the going rate for editing services is about a third what is listed here.
Of course, if an editor thinks she is worth ten times these rates, I'm sure that she is. The site does specify that rates are based upon a survey of members. It's useful information.
It's just surprising to me that there exists such a huge discontent between the rates that editors claim they charge on one side and what is being advertised to customers on the other. I wonder if there's a specific explanation for this variation or if it's a matter of two swimmers diving into different ends.of the same pool.
Or they're recognize that they are from piss-poor country and cannot compete with the first world pricing rates. That happens too, and doesn't automatically means that they're wanting to maliciously exploit you for their own profit.
...Just throwing that in as a devil's advocate.
I'm gonna say it inherent differs due to the fact the reporting editors are usually working for a publisher of some level versus the more "vanity" type projects/employers you find on Fiver.
The exact same artists (myself included) are going to devote different levels of effort/time based on those opportunities/prices.
I mean, there's also exploited labour at play here. We should pay people for the work that they do, and geographical location or someone's economic circumstance shouldn't factor into ethical hiring practices. One of the other things I'd say is that you also tend to get what you pay for, and if you're aiming for professional quality editing, you are best not using Fiverr or Craigslist to source your editor for whom you cannot tell if they're an editor who has been in the business for 15 years or if they're a student trying to make money on the side to pay their loans with only a few manuscripts under their belt.
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