What it costs
What copy-editing / line editing costs — and what you're actually buying
A line edit costs £800–£2,000 for a full-length book and a copy-edit £800–£1,600, both driven by how much intervention the text needs. Text that started as speech, or was drafted fast, carries filler that takes real time to remove.
What good looks like
- A sample edit of 1,000 words before you commit
- Changes tracked, so you can see and reverse everything
- A short style note explaining the pattern behind the corrections
- Queries rather than silent rewrites where voice is involved
A separate free preview: A free outside view of your own pages
A separate editorial preview of one extract; it describes what to revise and does not edit your sentences. Send up to 5,000 words. You get back what the draft appears to be doing to somebody who wasn't there when you wrote it, the strongest thing in it named, the exact place a reader starts to drift, and three revision priorities in order.
A separate editorial preview of one extract; it describes what to revise and does not edit your sentences. An AI-assisted read of your own pages. Not a human edit, not a line edit, and not a scored report.
What you are actually buying
A line edit works on how your sentences land — rhythm, clarity, repetition, and the places where a reader has to read twice. It is not proofreading, and it is not restructuring. It is the pass that makes prose sound like it was written on purpose.
Why it costs that
Line and light copy work is priced per 1,000 words or per hour, and the driver is how much intervention the text needs. Text that started as speech, or was drafted fast, carries filler and repetition that takes real time to remove — which is why a dictated manuscript and a carefully typed one of the same length can differ substantially in quote.
How to spend less
Do the mechanical passes yourself first: filler, false starts, repetition and paragraphing. They are boring and they are most of the hours. What remains is the judgement work, which is what you actually want a line editor for, and it is a much smaller invoice.
What good looks like
- A sample edit of 1,000 words before you commit
- Changes tracked, so you can see and reverse everything
- A short style note explaining the pattern behind the corrections
- Queries rather than silent rewrites where voice is involved
Questions to ask them
- Can I see a sample edit on my own pages first?
- What do you do when you think a sentence is deliberate but wrong?
- How many passes is this?
- Do you keep a style sheet?
Red flags
- No sample offered
- A quote given before seeing the manuscript
- Silent rewriting of dialect or deliberate voice
- Line editing sold as the same thing as developmental editing
Honestly
A line edit on a book with a structural problem is money spent on sentences you will delete. Do the structural read first. If your budget only stretches to one edit, it should not be this one.
About Your Book Pro
Your Book Pro is a book-writing platform built in Britain. Start with an idea, notes, half a draft, a podcast, or a finished manuscript, and use our purpose-built AI tools for planning, feedback, editing, proofreading, cover designs, and to create print-ready files. Writing is totally free: you can type, upload or speak your book as much as you like, and use only the editing tools you need with Plus, or go unlimited with Pro.
Produce world-class drafts at the fraction of the cost of hiring a human editorial team.
Every account starts with 1,000 welcome credits, and a plain export of your own words is free.
These prices are here to be used, not to sell you something — brief a freelancer with them, sanity-check a quote, or work out what you actually need. Where Your Book Pro changes the arithmetic, the page says so; where it does not, it says that too.
A line edit on a book with a structural problem is money spent on sentences you will delete. Do the structural read first. If your budget only stretches to one edit, it should not be this one.
What it costs
| What you are buying | Typical range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| CIEP suggested minimum, hourly | £37.11/hr | Published minimum |
| Market rate, per word | £0.01–£0.02/word | UK market range |
| Typical 60,000-word book | £600–£1,200 | £0.01–£0.02 × 60,000 |
| 80,000-word novel | £800–£1,600 | Quoted directly |
CIEP suggested minimum rates effective 1 March 2026; Books.by; publishing.co.uk; The Ghostwriters Agency. Dated 9 September 2026.
Clean up a chapter
Email me my free review linkQuestions people ask
- What's the difference between line editing and copy-editing?
- A line editor changes how a sentence sounds; a copy-editor changes whether it is correct and consistent, and builds a style sheet.
- Do I need both?
- Usually not. Most self-published books need one, and a copy-edit is the more common answer.
- How much does line editing cost per 1,000 words?
- Roughly £10–£25 per 1,000 words, depending on condition and the editor's experience.
- Does a light edit change my voice?
- It should not. If the returned manuscript sounds like someone else, that is a failure rather than thoroughness.