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Originally Posted by tompe
So how many man hour are you talking about here? And how many pages in the book?
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Neither by themselves is an indicator of what final cost will be. Final cost does include man hours if the charge is by the hour; the charge can also be by the project or by the manuscript page or by the word or by many other formulations. Pages are generally irrelevant unless you are talking about manuscript pages which differ significantly from printed pages.
Probably more important in the cost factor is what tasks the editor is to do. Editing can range from "simple" line editing for grammar and spelling only to "complex" or developmental editing which goes to structure and fact checking, along with grammar and spelling and myriad other functions. The more "complex" the editing, the higher the cost.
Also factored into the cost is specialized knowledge. For example, if the book is about medicine, an editor who has some base knowledge of the medicine involved and thus is more likely to question something than an editor who has no familiarity with the subject matter will charge more for that knowledge and skill. Similarly, if part of the editor's job is to code the manuscript for the typesetting, the charge will be higher than without coding.
A manuscript that is well-written to start with will cost less to edit than one that is poorly written and confusing. Similarly, if the author's native language is other than the language in which the book is to be published, that may raise difficulties and increase the price.
There are a lot of factors involved in establishing the final editorial costs of a manuscript.