Finding an Editor

I've been putting off publication for many years. I find it a very intimidating process. In most ideal situations, you go from an editor to a literary agent to a publisher. Regardless of whether or not you want to self-publish or go the traditional route, the one common step needed is having an editor. One of my goals for 2017 was to have the first book in my zombie series fully edited. Turns out that's not financially possible. Here's why:

I found two editors that I really liked. They were professional, had excellent websites breaking everything down, and they were interested in the genre of my book, which was speculative fiction with a focus on dystopian and apocalyptic themes. For those of you who haven't read any of my writing on here, I'm referring to Dead & Sick.

The first editor, Patti Waldygo from Desert Sage has a lot of fantastic and helpful articles on her site that first got me hooked. I definitely recommend checking her out! She has 25 years of experience and has edited a lot of big stuff. However, if your wallet is tight, she's not for you. For my book - which is 221,600 words - she quoted me at $7,677 to to a full edit for the entire book. Now, a lot comes with that! She gives examples, explanations, focuses on character development, tense, pretty much gives you everything. The price she gave me was based on $30 an hour for a heavy edit, which is $20 less than her normal rate.

The second editor I spoke with, Tammy Salyer from Inspired Ink Editing does an equally elaborate edit. She quoted me at a starting price of $4,400. She based her price on how many words are normally found on a published book: 250. She broke down my word count and then multiplied her charging rate of $3.50-$5.50 per page.

It was heartbreaking to realize that I will probably never be able to afford someone with professional skills to edit my books, and nowadays, most agents require your books to have been edited this extremely. It's one of the reasons why so many writers are turning to self-publishing. That being said, if you self-publish a book that has not been edited, most readers will put it down only a few pages in.

I'm interested in seeing if anyone here has any similar experiences or if they've been able to find someone reasonably priced with the 10+ years of experience that most agents require. Once you get a foot in the door, your publisher will pay for the editor, but until then, your first few books are on you and it sucks!