Hi Angela,

Thank you for all of the advice you have given us over the years. I am a single mom and I just finished my first book. I was looking for an affordable editor and I found one. It’s like really, really cheap. I contacted them and the owner emailed me back. I was kind of surprised that his email had misspelled words and pretty bad grammar. But, according to his website, he has a stable of editors who work for him. Maybe he doesn’t actually edit any English books himself? More problematic I think is that even his website has lots of errors. There’s a bullet list of services and none of the letters are capitalized and there isn’t any punctuation.

A little red flag is waving but they only charge $1 per page for editing and I’m really tight on money right now. It’s really tempting.

What do you think?

– R.R.

I was once a single mother of three with no child support coming in (and I wrote a book about it). Heck, I even did almost all of my Christmas shopping at a dollar store (back when stuff was REALLY only $1.00). My kids had the cheapest crayons, coloring books, and plastic toys in town and they never once complained, God bless them.

So, I understand how desperation can lead to temptation for a really good “deal.” Unfortunately, if you pay a foreign outfit (that has errors on its website and in its emails) to edit your English-language book, you may end up with a manuscript in far worse shape than it is now. And, you will either have to fix it, or pay someone else to re-edit it for you…at a much higher rate.

Yes, the owner of that website might not be editing books himself but, if he’s charging that low rate, he probably has friends and family in his country editing the books. He might have some professional editors in that country but I would strongly advise against hiring an English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) editor for an English-language book aimed at the English reading/speaking market…especially at that too-good-to-be-true rate.

I recommend requesting affordable quotes from professional editors who have experience, and whose native language is English.

Also, see:

Can’t Afford An Editor? Try These Four Fun Steps For A Much Cleaner Manuscript!

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