Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
Do you have any basis for your statement that "publishers are becoming increasingly reluctant to pay for copyeditors"?
There's copyediting, and there's proofreading. Proofreading has become somewhat iffy. Plus there may well be greater time constraints for copyeditors, and a lot of subpar copyeditors.
But my objection was mostly to the notion that copyediting and proofreading are done or not done based on the author's star power or lack thereof.
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I know of one author who was told it would not be done (either the proofreading or the copyediting). This was five years ago and she had to hire her own. She had a small publisher, not one of the big 6. I know of two authors who were with the big 6 who were told the book would go straight to copyediting and get no other editing steps due to time constraints (I believe the books were read by said editors and deemed good enough.) One of those authors had it happen within the last 2 years and the other was probably 7 years ago. I was at a conference when one author giving a talk (he was with the big six) said that after his original editor left, his book received no editing at any level. He got galley proofs and had only that chance to make his own final changes. No copyediting, not proofing, etc.
That is commonly known in the industry as "orphaning."
Also beware of what is expected at the different levels of editing. Some copyeditors do not consider things such as "eye color went from blue to green" to be part of copyediting. Yet some proofreaders consider typos and grammar part of the job. There are very loose standards in the definitions. This is true in the entire industry these days and never more true than when hiring a contractor. If you're ever looking to hire a contractor be very careful to get an exact description and examples of what types of things the person will be looking for.