Proofreading, Copyediting or an AI Check: What Does a Self-Published Book Need, and What Does It Cost?

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Almost every self-published book needs a proofread, and many need more. A proofread fixes spelling, grammar and punctuation. A copyedit also changes your wording. An editorial assessment tells you what is weak in the book without touching the text. Below is what each costs, what each leaves out, and where an AI check fits.

What is the difference between proofreading, copyediting and an editorial assessment?

A proofread is the last pass. It finds spelling mistakes, wrong words, missing punctuation and doubled words, and it leaves your sentences as they are.

A copyedit goes further. The editor changes the text for clarity, consistency and flow, and fixes the same errors a proofreader would. Developmental or editorial work looks at structure, pacing and gaps in the argument or plot, and it comes before any of the others.

The order matters. If an editor rewrites a chapter, you proofread after that, not before, because new sentences bring new typos.

How much does a human editor cost?

The Editorial Freelancers Association publishes median rate ranges from a survey of its members for 2025, in its 2026 rate chart. It warns that individual rates vary widely. For fiction and non-fiction:

For an 80,000-word novel, that is roughly $960 to $1,600 for a proofread and $1,600 to $2,160 for a copyedit. The cost is simple arithmetic on the per-word rates. A person who reads your whole book and changes it for you is worth the money when your budget allows it. I cover where to look in my post on how to hire a professional book editor.

What do software tools like Grammarly and ProWritingAid cost?

They are cheap, and you run them yourself. ProWritingAid’s pricing page lists Premium at $10 a month billed yearly, $120, and it includes sentence rephrasing. Grammarly has a free plan with spelling and grammar checks, and I explain how I use it in how to edit your book for free with Grammarly.

The catch is that you judge every suggestion alone, and the tools offer rewrites. If you accept them, the sentences are no longer fully yours. They also tend to flag a lot, and they do not read your whole book for consistency the way a person does.

Do I have to disclose an AI check to KDP?

Not if you wrote the text. KDP says: “We require you to inform us of AI-generated content (text, images, or translations) when you publish a new book.” It also says you are not required to disclose AI-assisted content, meaning work you created yourself and then used AI tools to edit, refine or error-check (KDP content guidelines).

The line is who wrote the words. An AI tool that rewrites your sentences moves you towards AI-generated text. A check that only marks problems, and leaves you to fix them, does not. My post on KDP’s AI disclosure rules has the full wording.

Which one does your book need?

• Tight budget, first book: run a tool for the first pass, then have someone read the book once more.
• Sentences you know are rough: pay for a copyedit, because a checker cannot fix the wording for you.
• A book you are unsure works: get an editorial assessment before you spend on anything else.
• A book you want to keep fully your own, at a low price: an AI check that marks errors and weaknesses without rewriting is the honest middle option. It costs far less than a human editor, and it does not replace one.

What is the honest low-cost option?

I built a service for the last case. Manuscript Review reads your whole manuscript with AI software and I check the findings. You get every spelling, grammar and consistency error marked as a comment in your own Word file, and an editorial report naming the weaknesses and asking you questions. It never writes or rewrites your text. You make every change yourself.

If you want to use AI on your own words, how I use AI without it writing the book for me is in my answer on whether Amazon or Google penalize it. Which AI suits which job is in which AI to use to write and self-publish a book.

It is not a human copyedit, and it will not promise a book free of errors. If you want a person to change the text for you, hire the editor. If you want to keep the writing yours and find what needs fixing at a small fraction of that cost, it is built for that. The page has the prices and the 7-day guarantee.