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Originally Posted by Sil_liS
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As it happens, Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden are folks I've known for years. Patrick is Senior Editor and Manager of Science Fiction at Tor these days, and Teresa is their former Managing Editor and now a Consulting Editor.
Making Light is an excellent source of info.
But even if the reject rate is higher than the comment I quoted (which was specific to
that editor's experience), it doesn't affect my point.
(The editor, BTW, was the late George H. Scithers, who was the original editor at Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine before Gardner Dozois took over, and later was editor for Amazing Stories when TSR Publications picked it up. He was describing what
he encountered. I used to live across the street from George back then, and was at a couple of editorial meetings as an interested observer.)
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Except according to BearMountainBooks this is exactly what happens. Costs get cut so books don't get edited.
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Size matters. This is true in her case, but not necessarily across the board. She's writing from the perspective of an indie publisher, contracting out for services. She contracts out if she thinks she needs to and can afford to.
Large trade publishers have salaried employees on staff that do that sort of things. What they
are increasingly not doing to cut costs is copy editing and proofreading, which do tend to be contracted out.
A friend used to be VP of an editorial production house, that provided copy editing, proofreading, and typesetting services to publishers. She lamented on a list I'm on the number of publishers that were increasing not doing such things to save money. An editor for a trade house, who was on the same list at the time, responded "But such things are part of the basic budget of the book, and are
always done!" "Maybe they still are at
your house", was the reply, "but I'm the one dealing with clients who used to pay us to do it and don't any more!"
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Dennis