Are you writing for publication?

 (This message was edited by wordwarrior on 10-04-03 @ 7:09 pm EDT)

That was an expensive lesson. Did you try to sue them in small claims court?

No reputable agency of any kind asks for money in return for editing. If they think your work is saleable (which means they get a legitimate commission ONLY WHEN THEY'VE SOLD THE WORK) they'll work on it with you, if it needs that much. Usually, it's the editor who buys it who suggests edits.

The only kind of editing which should ever be paid for is copyediting (which I happen to do, I'm selling my skills), and only after checking out references, carefully checking!

I don't even edit creative stuff (ie: fiction) because that's so personal, it has to stay in the writers' voice, not mine. I will do this for friends/other writers on a personal basis, no charge, of course.

I did try to ghostwrite a non-fiction thing once. I should have checked references on the author. He turned out to be a loon, and disliked everything I did. I was re-writing about 2,000 stream-of-consciousness, single spaced pages into a documentary-style recounting of some of his professional experiences. He adored every word of his deathless prose, and wouldn't let anything be cut, or re-arranged so it made sense. He also phoned me at least 4 times every dang day, asking if "WE" were done yet! I kept his deposit (50% of the fee) for work completed, boxed up the whole mess, returned it to him and fired him.

Chriswriter