Our general approach is to charge US$60/hr for the services we provide.
This sometimes adjusts up if it is a “high end” service, and sometimes adjusts down if it is a “low end” service. If we’re sub-contracting, the rate we charge you reflects the costs we in turn incur plus a margin on top for our oversight, coordination, and time.
The big variable is what do you get for an hour of our time? It is impossible to say, just like it is impossible to say what you get for an hour of an attorney’s time, etc. But we definitely understand why this is an important question, and why you’d like an answer.
There are some services we can provide at a fixed cost, for example, book proofing or editing at a cost per word, but we really don’t like doing that because the obscured truth of all such “fixed price” services is that while you’re getting the certainty of a fixed price, you have sacrificed the certainty of a “best job” in the process.
There may also be some services we can provide in return for a royalty share on the books you sell. But that would be rare, because the ugly obscured truth that most publishers desperately seek to conceal is that very very few books sell more than several hundred copies, and some don’t sell any copies at all (other than to friends and family). See our related article on what type of earnings to expect as a published author.