How much do I pay for editing? How much would you pay?

Pyekett said:

writingallthetime, are you looking to set yourself up as an editor for self-publishing authors by asking members of a writer's forum what they would expect to make the choice between competitors and how much they would be willing to pay?

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Having reread this thread, it certainly seems that way to me, Pyekett: well spotted.

writingallthetime said:

I am looking at it from both sides, as an editor and as an author.
Thanks!

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Writingallthetime, judging by your comments here you are nowhere near ready to start work as an editor. Please don't come back with a comment that "this is only a forum post, I write more carefully for publication,"; good editors have an inbuilt respect and instinct for writing and wouldn't leave a slapdash comment here if they were paid to.

By all means work on your skills: but please don't start taking money from writers just yet. It wouldn't be fair.

Of course, if I've got this all wrong I apologise.

writingallthetime said:

Does there always have to be a sample edit?
Can't the editor simply offer samples of previous work to avoid having to do an edit for free?

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From a fiction perspective this is a really bad idea. You need to know how an editor's style interacts with your own. Samples of previous editorial work will only tell you how well the editor's style meshed with a completely different author.

For example, I have extensive experience in editing scientific papers. I can take almost any scientific paper and edit the voice right out of it until you're left with a beautiful, grammatically correct, clinically clean piece of work. If you want to submit to Nature or Science, I'd be a great editor to choose. If you want to submit to Asimov's Science Fiction, I'd be your worst nightmare. Never hire an editor without seeing a sample edit of YOUR work.