What a fact-check costs

Editors ask what a fact-check costs. The honest answer is the time it takes to call everyone back.

A 3,000-word feature has, on average, about sixty checkable claims.^[1] Each one takes between two minutes and two days. The slow ones are the quotes: people remember saying something softer than they said.^[2]

I budget one hour per thousand words for the easy claims, and a separate day for the quotes.^[3]

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1. My count across twelve features filed in 2024 and 2025: between 41 and 83 claims each. ↩︎

2. I record every interview, with permission, and send quotes back for accuracy, never for approval. ↩︎

3. For guidebook chapters the ratio is different: every listing is a claim, and every claim is a visit. ↩︎

Who pays for it

On a commission, the publication does: the fee includes the check. On a book, the publisher should, and the contract should say so.