What it costs
What book proofreading costs — and what you're actually buying
Proofreading a full-length book costs £400–£800 in the UK, based on the CIEP suggested minimum of £31.92 an hour. The number moves on throughput rather than rate: a clean copy-edited manuscript runs at 3,000–5,000 words an hour, a rough one at half that.
What good looks like
- A style sheet listing every decision made — spellings, hyphenation, capitalisation, number style
- Tracked changes or clear markup, so you can see and reverse everything
- Queries raised rather than silent changes to anything that might be deliberate
- A sample of 1,000 words before you commit
A separate free preview: A free outside view of your own pages
A separate editorial preview; it gives reader-focused feedback and is not a proofread or line edit. 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; it gives reader-focused feedback and is not a proofread or line edit. 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
Proofreading is the last pass before printing. It catches typos, inconsistent spellings, broken punctuation, wrong page numbers and layout errors. It is not the stage at which anything gets rewritten — if your sentences need work, you needed a copy-editor, and you needed them earlier.
Why it costs that
Proofreading is priced by the hour and the hourly rate is the CIEP suggested minimum — £31.92 as of 1 March 2026 — with experienced proofreaders charging above it. Throughput is what moves the total: a clean, well-copy-edited manuscript runs at 3,000–5,000 words an hour, and a rough one at half that. So the same book can cost £400 or £900 depending entirely on what happened before the proofreader saw it.
How to spend less
Copy-edit first. A proofread on an uncopy-edited manuscript costs more and delivers less, because the proofreader is doing two jobs at one job's rate. Then do a disciplined self-pass — two weeks' gap, a different typeface, read on paper, and mechanical searches for names, numbers and hyphenation. Every error you remove is time you are not paying for.
What good looks like
- A style sheet listing every decision made — spellings, hyphenation, capitalisation, number style
- Tracked changes or clear markup, so you can see and reverse everything
- Queries raised rather than silent changes to anything that might be deliberate
- A sample of 1,000 words before you commit
Questions to ask them
- Have you proofread this genre before, and can I see a sample?
- Will you work in Word with tracked changes, or on a PDF proof?
- What will you query rather than change?
- What is your turnaround, and what happens if I am late delivering?
Red flags
- A quote given without seeing the manuscript. Rates depend on the state of the text.
- No style sheet. Consistency decisions have to be recorded somewhere or they will not hold.
- "I'll also improve the flow." That is copy-editing or line editing, priced differently, and you should know which you are buying.
- No professional membership or verifiable book credits.
Honestly
Most self-published books that read as amateur have not skipped proofreading — they have skipped copy-editing and had it proofread instead. If you are choosing between the two on a budget, choose the copy-edit.
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.
Most self-published books that read as amateur have not skipped proofreading — they have skipped copy-editing and had it proofread instead. If you are choosing between the two on a budget, choose the copy-edit.
What it costs
| What you are buying | Typical range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Per 1,000 words | £10–£20 per 1,000 words | £0.005–£0.01 a word, the UK market range. |
| Per hour | £31.92/hr | CIEP suggested minimum for proofreading, effective 1 March 2026. |
| Typical 60,000-word memoir | £300–£600 | £0.005–£0.01 × 60,000 words. An 80,000-word novel runs £400–£800. |
CIEP suggested minimum rates effective 1 March 2026, Books.by, publishing.co.uk, The Ghostwriters Agency. Dated 30 August 2026.
See what's included in Pro
Email me my free review linkQuestions people ask
- How much does proofreading cost per 1,000 words?
- Roughly £5–£12 per 1,000 words, derived from the CIEP hourly minimum and a realistic throughput. Rough text sits at the top of that range.
- Is proofreading cheaper than copy-editing?
- Yes, roughly half, because the scope is much narrower and the throughput much higher.
- Should I proofread before or after typesetting?
- After, on the file that will actually print. Proofreading a Word document and then typesetting means proofreading twice.
- Do I need a proofread if I've had a copy-edit?
- Yes, but a quick one. Copy-editing introduces errors and typesetting introduces more.