Let’s say you have to answer an email from an important client. Not being a professional writer, you’re unsure whether the lengthy response you hacked out will even make sense. Who are you going to call? Gramlee. Paste your rough-hewn verbiage into a text box on Gramlee’s website. Hit submit. And within about two hours the text is emailed back, expertly polished by human editors so that it’s both readable and grammatically correct.
Gramlee claims that the average email runs about 150 words, and charges under a dollar to edit a document of that length. Longer documents incur built-in discounts; for example, editing a report-length 1,617-word document—about 7 double-spaced pages—costs just under USD 10, which is cheap enough to entice nearly everyone to use the service. Gramlee lets frequent users ‘buy words’ in advance, and it’s easy to imagine companies running an account with the editing service to make sure their routine documents are professionally produced.
Right now, most organizations handle the editing of everyday documents in a far less efficient manner. Important letters, emails and other documents are either handed off to the lone office worker who majored in English, or a company locates freelance editors and summons them whenever the need arises. Indeed, Gramlee does for writing what online translation and concierge services have done for other common tasks that benefit from a professional’s touch. And a fast turnaround will hook customers into making a habit of having their documents edited. Considering the billions of memos and emails that circulate every day, the market for companies providing on-the-spot editing is vast. (Related: PAs for the rest of us.)
Website: www.gramlee.com
Contact: cs@gramlee.com
Spotted by: Mark Joan
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That sounds great - especially for someone like me who uses English as a second language.
sorry, but for someone who uses professional sub-editors that turn out high quality documents for an intelligent financial audience, these figures sound dificult (i mean, impossible) to believe. i have pushed these costs down and experienced quality failures so i would guess that this kind of service targets customer segments where absolute grammatical quality is not a prerequisite or where the text is of such high quality that little more than a reader is required.
If only their website would work!
First off, thank you Springwise.com for featuring us! You've introduced a problem (a good one, albeit) for us.
As one of the comments noted, our website has been choking for air as we've been inundated by visitors in the past 24 hours. We're working on this.
Our editors are excited to be in a position to help everyone with their writing. We're looking forward to seeing your writing soon!
Copyediting of 1,617 words will require more than an hour. They price it at $9.95, which wouldn’t even cover half of labor costs, let alone overhead and profit. Gramlee can't keep going with this business model.
I sent my 100 words for trial editing three days ago. Still received nothing. Can't complain about the service though.....there isn't any!!!
"While you wait editing". That is very true. the only problem is I am still waiting!!! Already it has been more than four days and i am still waiting. Another coffee? Sure!
I just got mine back. Looks great! It seems like they are overwhelmed with the amount of traffic they've been getting of late. At least that's what the editor told me.
Wow! They really transformed my writing.
I'm a graduate student who needs to write a lot of papers. They guys are just amazing!
Sent my text around a week ago and am still waiting, too... So much about their fast response :S
Worked for me. Of course, I was a paying customer (that may have helped!)
Thanks Springwise for sharing this great resource.
Um, this is not a new trend guys.
http://www.Scribendi.com has been doing this for a decade.
looks like they changed their pricing:
concerning your examples:
- email (150 words): before = This means that prices rose by 300%!
I'm assuming they were in Beta phase before with lower prices. They just launched a press release announcing public availability of their service:
http://www.gramlee.com/grammarblog/2008/04/29/press-release-1/
An amazing service! I wish I had this when I had to write all my term papers & reports for high school & college English classes. May have gotten a better grade.
Dhananjay | March 12, 2008 9:29 PM