By Devan Jensen
When authors turn in a new manuscript, they usually want it printed now. How long does it take from manuscript to printed book? We typically plan on one year from the time the rough manuscript arrives to the time it is peer reviewed, edited, proofread, designed, sent to authors for approval, proofread, indexed, and printed.
You can estimate how long it will take to edit a manuscript by looking over all its parts. How many typos do you see on each page? How complete are the notes? Does it have an appendix? How many photos will be used? Are they scanned? Will you edit on hard copy or electronic copy?
The following guidelines also apply:
The Chicago Manual of Style, 2.49 Estimating editing time. Estimates for how long the job of manuscript editing should take—a figure generally determined by the publisher and agreed to by the manuscript editor—usually start with the length of the manuscript. Because of inevitable variations in typefaces and margins and other formatting characteristics from one manuscript to another, the length is best determined by a word count rather than a page count (though a word count can be derived from a page count for paper-only manuscripts). A 100,000-word book manuscript, edited by an experienced editor, might take seventy-five to one hundred hours of work before being sent to the author, plus ten to twenty additional hours after the author’s review. This rough estimate may need to be adjusted to take into account any complexities in the text or documentation, the presence and characteristics of any tables and illustrations, and the degree of electronic formatting and markup that an editor will need to remove or impose (see 2.77). If in doubt, edit a small sample to serve as the basis of an estimate. An additional factor is of course the publication schedule, which will determine how many days are available for the editing stage. Also pertinent is information about the author’s availability to review the edited manuscript, amenability to being edited, propensity to revise, and so forth.
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When you talk about number of pages/words edited, is that the editor’s finished work or the original manuscript? I find my edited version is often shorter than the original.
Thanks for your good question. I estimate based on the word count of the original manuscript because each word must be read. I am glad to hear that you eliminate wordiness.