To find a copy-editor, go directly to the PEG Directory of Members’ Services. There you’ll find a list of the members who currently wish to make their services known, listed by province and then alphabetically by surname. To help you find the right match for your project, each listing includes information about the practitioner’s field of expertise, preferences, training and experience.

Should you require a copy of the directory on CD, contact our Membership Secretary by email at membership@editors.org.za. Alternatively, the directory is also available as a pdf file; either save it onto your computer and search through it at your convenience or open it to search online. Use your browser’s search function to search for key words within the directory.

What copy-editors and proofreaders do
We strongly urge you to either go to About editing or consult the opening pages of the directory, which contain some background information on terminology. Here you’ll also find guidelines on what to consider when appointing a copy-editor.

If you’re uncertain about what copy-editors, proofreaders and allied practitioners do, or how they can help you and your organisation, we suggest you first read About editing and also the glossary under About editing. PEG members, for example, work in a variety of languages and publishing activities, including writing, rewriting (or overwriting), copy-editing, proofreading, translating, indexing, design, desktop publishing (DTP) and project management. You may require them to perform one or more of these tasks.

Fees
Clients regularly approach PEG with requests for ‘recommended’, ‘guideline’ or ‘set’ rates, but the Group is not in a position to provide these figures. The reason for this is that by law recommended fees can be set only for professions governed by a statutory body. As yet, PEG is not such a statutory body and so we may not recommend or give guideline rates.

As a result, the profession operates purely on free market principles, which enables the rates charged for different media, publishers and tasks relating to publications and communications to vary widely. (See the article on rates in the August 2008 issue of PEGboard for more information on current fees for copy-editing and proofreading.)

In general, book publishers tend to prefer to pay service providers per page or a rate per thousand words rather than hourly rates, which they consider difficult to monitor and control. Because of the nature of their respective interventions, subeditors' and proofreaders' rates tend to be calculated on a per magazine page basis. On the other hand, proofreaders are almost always paid per typeset page, whether pages contain text only, illustrations only or a combination of both.

• Copy-editors were earning around R250–350 an hour in the corporate market in 2008.
• Publishers that can afford this should be paying the same, but the average in this sector is probably nearer to R120 to R150 an hour for hard-copy editing and R150 to R160 an hour for electronic editing (where the copy-editor is doing a certain amount of the work normally required of the typesetter, and so is saving the publisher money further down the line).
• Current (2008) rates for copy-editing can vary as widely as R25 to R100 per typeset page, depending on the nature of the text and the level of the content. Magazine subeditors are paid somewhere between R50 and R120 per page at 2008 rates.
• Proofreading rates in book publishing tend to vary between R10 and R30 per typeset page, the rate reducing with each stage of proofreading. Proofreaders on magazines can expect to be paid a per page rate between R30 and R100, depending upon a number of factors.
• A discounted rate may be offered in deserving cases such as student theses and NGOs/NPOs, but charges will depend on students’ or organisations’ funding sources and capacities.