Author: Judy L Mohr

Recently, a topic came up in one of my many discussion forums about whether a writer should insist on using a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) when working with editors. It's not the first time that I've encountered the question.

I understand the rationale behind it, but I also feel that it comes from a place of fear and the lack of understanding of how copyright law works.

In today's post, I want to address this idea of using NDAs when working with editors, and I want to explain why I advise against them for fiction novelists.

Every so often, I find myself in a situation where I have a discussion about the real costs of editing. In the past, when I have had this conversation on my blog, it has been about the time it takes to read a document and the effective editing time as a consequence. However, recently I have found myself in a situation where perspective clients have been assuming that my rates for larger projects are based on my sample contract rate.

Whenever I have an inquiry from a perspective client, in the initial response that I send back, there is often the offer of a sample contract. I do not offer free sample edits—I never have and I never will—but I do offer a smaller substantive editing contract that does not need to go through my full onboarding vetting process. Any prospective client who wants to see what I could do with their work on a smaller scale are given the opportunity to employ my services through this smaller contract. I also point out that should a larger contract come from this, containing the same words that were found in the sample contract (with some editing expected), the sample contract can be used to offset the cost associated for the larger contract.

But here is where assumptions were made.

There have been some prospective clients that have taken the fee associated with the sample contract and have extrapolated the cost associated for their manuscripts based on a linear scale. As such, they assumed that I would be charging in the order of US$6000 for an edit on 100,000 words. This is certainly not the case.

My father is often fond of saying that when you "assume" things that you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me". And this particular assumption is no exception.

In today's post, I want to highlight why this assumption is a bad assumption, and I want to bring to your attention some of the facts associated with the real costs of editing.