Friday, May 02, 2014

Stick it to a Billionaire



I just Googled editing services and found that 5 cents a word seems to be a good price for editing these days. For a 70,000-word book, that works out to $3500. And if you want to deduct all of that as a business expense, your writing has to bring in at least $3500. And for all you know, your book is being edited by some guy in India who's telling people in Wyoming how to get their cable TV working while he's editing your book.

Contrast that with bidding on Evil Editor to edit your book in the next few weeks. For starters, you can deduct EE as a charitable contribution rather than a business expense, so you don't have to have any writing income. And you get edited by the world's most famous editor, not some ESL-heroin-addict-scam-artist in Ivory Coast.

Even if you don't have a completed book, you should be bidding on this just to keep some billionaire for whom $3500 is pocket change from getting a bargain. You know that no matter how high you go he'll outbid you, but for one brief moment you'll be a thorn in his side. It's human nature not to want billionaires to get great deals. This is your chance to stick it to one.


* Evil Editor not responsible for expenses incurred by people trying to stick it to a billionaire but accidentally winning auction.

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