We do our level best to reply within 3 business days to all emails, but we are a small team–if you haven’t heard back from us in 3 business days, please reach back out!
We are open weekdays. We close weekends to help facilitate a healthy work-life balance. This means we’ll never schedule an edit to start or finish on a weekend, and we’ll reply to your weekend-sent email by Wednesday.
Think about your manuscript as a whole. Do you have questions about how well it works as a story? You likely want a developmental edit. Concerned about flow and pacing? Time for a line edit. Worried about grammar? Book a proofread. Have concerns about diversity? A sensitivity read is right for you!
If you’re still not sure, send us the first 20 pages of your manuscript and we’ll give you our recommendation. We also have this handy two-part blog post about how to prep your novel for revision.
This depends a great deal on the editor and services you want. We do have several editors who are consistently booked 6+ months out.
Standard manuscript format–Times New Roman, size 12, double spaced, one inch margins. If you send it in a different format, we will likely adjust it for ease of editing. We prefer Word documents, but also work with Google docs.
If your piece is under 100,000 words, you can expect your manuscript back within 3 weeks. Longer than 100,000 words, and we’ll discuss an individual turnaround time for you.
Depending on the edit, you will get in-line comments/changes and/or an editor’s letter. We use track changes through Word/Google Docs. You can see the specifics on our prices page.
We love specific questions–they really help us give you targeted feedback. Please include them in your email!
We have 10-day turnaround rush edits available for an additional 25% of your payment. Rush edits will always come back to you on a weekday. Send us an email and we’ll get you in ASAP!
We do have some editors available to take on ultra-rush edits at an increased cost. These edits must not be longer than 10,000 words.
We use DocuSign. It’s fairly straightforward, but do let us know if it doesn’t work for you.
We send invoices via Stripe. Sometimes they get flagged as spam, though, so check there if you haven’t received it after we emailed. We can also send invoices via PayPal, but please ask for this specifically. We split payments in half–you’ll pay the first half on your start date and the final payment upon the completion of your edit.
You bet. Send us an email and we’ll work something out! Please note that we accept payment plans upfront–as in, your edit will begin once you have paid in full.
We create a private copy for our editors to work in, which they will then pass back to you once their edits are completed. We do clean out our Google drive regularly, so be sure to save your own private copy (we’ll remind you via email, too).
Email us to check their schedules at hello@saltandsagebooks.com.
We’re so glad you asked! We’ve created an ongoing book series called the Incomplete Guides–check out our Amazon or Kobo page to buy the guides there. We have Guides scheduled to publish roughly each month; if you’d like to be notified of new updates, follow us on Amazon.
Email us at hello@saltandsagebooks.com and ask. We do have some hidden talents, and we also keep a large list of external editors who might be a good fit. Alternatively, hop on Twitter and search “sensitivity reader” + your criteria.
After discussing it with our readers, we all agreed that “sensitivity reader” is the most searched-for term and would likely help the most authors find our services.
We’re glad you like your editor so much! To protect their privacy, we would be happy to facilitate an email exchange between the two of you, but we won’t put you directly in touch with any of our editors. If a phone call is the only way you can talk, let us know and we’ll facilitate something starting at $50/hour. *(We will gladly waive this fee for authors with disabilities that necessitate such communication.)*
Thank you for your generosity! You can send them a tip via PayPal or donate through our Ko-Fi. Be sure to let us know who the tip is for! All tips go directly to the editor (less any fees).
Each editor has their own thoughts on this–ask us and we’ll check for you! You can always credit Salt & Sage Books.
It started out as a bit of a joke–one member of our founding board lives near the ocean, and the other lives on a sagebrush steppe. But the more we thought about the name, the more we liked it. In cooking, salt and sage both add subtle flavors, bringing the taste of your original dish forward. That’s exactly what we want to do–to highlight the goodness that you’ve already created, and do so in a gentle way. Salt and sage both also have such a unique flavor, you know it when you’ve tasted it. We hope you’ll feel the same way about our unique blend of kindness, clarity, and high-quality editing.
Send an email to hello@saltandsagebooks.com! We’d love to hear from you.
We’re currently hiring based on client demand, but we do have a waiting list here. We are always on the lookout for talented BIPOC, queer, neurodiverse, and disabled editors!