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I think what a lot of people in here, particularly the editors, are forgetting is that, at the same time as they want a fixed fee up front for their work, which is okay if you're approaching a big publishing company whose first run is, say 20000 copies, they're talking about the same deal from someone who doesn't know if he's going to sell any books at all, and will be selling them for $2.99 in ebook form, and for whom sales of 20000 are the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow.
I agree $50 is a good wage for an editor. I'd be happy to be so badly paid myself as the man who has written the product that the editor is going to work on. I reckon it takes me, say, 3 hrs a day 5 days a week for a year to prepare a book which the editor is going to tart up in ten hours At $50 an hour that would give me $37500.
If an editor can guarantee me that income from my book, I'll be happy to guarantee him $500 to edit it. Of course I need an editor, not just a copy editor, not just a proof reader, but possibly also a developmental editor, although I thought his job was what writing is about. But the economics of the situation are against it with the fixed fee business model.
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