Finding freelance editorial help for your book project

For book authors, one of the great advantages of the Internet is how easily you can find and contact freelancers to help with your book project.

A great resource I recently discovered is the Editorial Freelancers Association. On the site you can search members by skill set and geographic area. Most of the people listed have a tremendous amount of experience. Rates vary.

There are some better-known freelancing sites, such as eLance and GetaFreelancer, where members who want work bid on your job. These sites provide an escrow system to protect the participants, and prices are decided by a reverse auction. It’s a great concept, but I don’t know if it’s something that works all that well for editorial jobs.

I was very disappointed the one time I listed a proofreading job with one of the popular sites. I gave the job to the best of 50 applicants, and it turned out that person didn’t have the necessary English skills and knowledge of style rules for books — despite having exemplary ratings from previous jobs.

My suspicion is that many of the bidders on the popular freelancing sites are overseas techies who are between Web-site development gigs. Nothing wrong with that, but when you’re paying good money for an editorial job, top-notch language skills and style are critical.