Elsevier Editing Services – Pricing

I’ve been taking a look around the competition, and if you didn’t know it before, Elsevier offer editing services. It’s open to anyone. You don’t have to have a paper destined for an Elsevier journal. Everyone is welcome. Great stuff. These are big boys, with a huge reputation, but I thought I’d take a look, over the next few days, at some reasons why you should choose me over them.

The first thing that stuck me was their price schedule, which I find a bit odd. It’s based on word count and looks like this:

Word count	EUR
Less than 1,500 From 1,501 to 6,000 From 6,001 to 12,000	150.00 175.00 245.00

Now. Given that a 12,000 word article is 8 times longer than a 1,500 word article, you might expect that it would cost 8 times more, putting the price of a 12,000 word article at 1,200 euros. But it’s not. It’s only 245 euros. So those of you with a lot to say are getting quite a bargain!

However, suppose your article is short, say, less than 1,500 words. This is 8 times shorter than a 12,000 word article, and you might expect that you would pay 8 times less than the 245 euros advertised. That would be around 30 euros. But it’s not. It’s only about 1.5 times less – 150 euros! So if your article is short (and beautifully formed), you’re not getting a great deal at all. In fact, you’re paying far more for each of your words than your colleagues with long manuscripts.

It’s hard to understand how they can offer editing of 12,000 words at such a low price.  Editing is like planting carrots. The more carrots there are, the longer it takes. It’s a linear relation.

I can only suppose that there are relatively few long manuscripts and they are subsidised by the much larger number of short and standard manuscripts.

Anyway, those of you with long scripts might be better off going to Elsevier (although there might be other good reasons to choose me, see future posts to find out more). However, for the rest, choose me instead!