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Jason D P.

Jason D P.

Chicago, IL
100% Job Success
Top Rated

Experienced, award-winning developmental book editor

[AUGUST 2023: I'm proud to announce that I am now an official member of the American Copy Editors Society, an industry organization devoted to excellence in traditional academic copy editing. Visit their website at aceseditors.org.] From 2007 to 2017 I was the owner of the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, which published 40 books for total distribution of over 20,000 copies. Along the way, CCLaP's books won or were finalists for a half-dozen awards, including the Pushcart Prize, the Lambda Award for LGBTQ literature, and the Independent Publisher Book Award; and the center itself was named one of the 10 best indie presses in the United States by both BookRiot.com and Poets & Writers magazine. Now I bring that same award-winning deep editing experience to your own self-published or small-press manuscript, helping you hone it with a fine knife into the best book it can possibly be. I specialize in "developmental" editing (also known as "content editing"), taking a big-picture look at your manuscript and identifying strengths and weaknesses in plot, character, pacing, style and tone, and giving you no-bones advice about how "publishable" it currently is. I also regularly do copy editing (also known as "line editing"), focusing in on a word-by-word basis to correct mistakes in what my industry calls GUPS (grammar, usage, punctuation and spelling). For self-publishing writers, my rate for either of these services is 1 cent per word, which works out for me to $25 per hour since I edit at a rate of 2,500 words per hour (at my slowest). If you need both, that's a grand total of 2 cents per word. To determine what my fee would be for your manuscript, take its word count and multiply by either 0.01 or 0.02, depending on the situation. I can promise to finish at least 10,000 words each weekday, so again some simple math will show you how long it would take me to complete your manuscript. For corporate clients, or work that falls under that kind of purview (such as editing website copy or pitch decks), I charge 5 cents per word; please contact me directly for more details. See my portfolio section at the bottom of the page for a broad selection of testimonials from authors I've worked with, links to some of the books CCLaP still has for sale at Amazon, and praise my books have garnered over the years from such publications as Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, the Chicago Tribune, HTMLGIANT, and more. I look forward to hearing from you. ***AI PLEDGE***: I promise that all work I complete for clients has been, and will always be, accomplished using only my human brain and ten human fingers, never using AI bots, Grammarly, or other software options. I encourage you to demand this promise from all the freelancer candidates you interview and work with!
Rating is 5 out of 5.
5.00 May 8, 2023 - Aug 25, 2023

"Jason is a brilliant editor."

Private earnings
Rating is 5 out of 5.
5.00 Feb 4, 2023 - Jun 26, 2023
Private earnings
Rating is 5 out of 5.
5.00 May 5, 2023 - Jun 3, 2023
Private earnings
Rating is 5 out of 5.
5.00 May 8, 2023 - May 12, 2023

"Jason was extremely knowledgeable and helpful. I let him know I had a deadline and exceeded expectations. Excellent work. Excellent communication. We’ll be back."

Private earnings
Mar 14, 2023 - May 9, 2023

No feedback given

Private earnings
Rating is 4.5 out of 5.
4.50 Mar 23, 2023 - Apr 25, 2023

"Jason did great work for me and I was really happy with the end result. I appreciate that Jason was adamant about making sure I had a positive experience and my expectations were met."

Private earnings
Rating is 3.9 out of 5.
3.90 Mar 7, 2023 - Mar 20, 2023

"The price was so good but the quality is expected to be better for an academic paper."

"I'm sorry to hear that this client had a disappointing experience with my work, although it's worth noting that they said absolutely nothing to me about it while the work was taking place. Editing is by definition a back-and-forth process, and I've had plenty of moments (and expect to have plenty more) where I'm not exactly doing at first what the client pictured in their head when first hiring me. In the future, I encourage this client and all others to actually mention to their freelancer what aspects of their editing they're frustrated by, and how it can be fixed, while the job is actually occurring. If this client had said so to me, I would've been very happy to adjust my work to meet their expectations. Now that the assignment is over and they're simply leaving feedback, there's no way for me to go back and fix what they're unhappy with (nor do I even know what aspect of my work they're unhappy with in the first place), which I must confess is disappointing and frustrating to me."

Private earnings
Nov 22, 2022 - Dec 6, 2022

No feedback given

Private earnings
Jul 14, 2022 - Dec 6, 2022

No feedback given

Private earnings
Rating is 5 out of 5.
5.00 Nov 15, 2022 - Nov 17, 2022
Private earnings
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Skills

  • Book Editing
  • Line Editing
  • Story Editing
  • Content Editing
  • Developmental Editing
  • Business Editing
  • Academic Editing
  • Proofreading

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