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walkitoutA little background first. I've been posting about ebooks, specifically referring to Eisler and Konrath's two part dialog about established authors (mostly of genre fiction) switching from contracts with what they term "legacy publishers" to self-publishing ebooks. In the comments threads on Konrath's blog and elsewhere in Konrath's online work, there are estimates about how much it costs to "produce" an ebook (that is, not the writing part, but the proofreading, cover art, copy editing, etc.). These estimates are running on the order of $800. On the FB mirror of my posts, H. took issue with this estimate:
"The comments keep talking about the upfront costs being maybe $800, presumably including copyediting AND proofreading AND cover design AND formatting. Sod that for a game of soldiers. Proofreading alone could easily be that much, if you pay any sort of decent wage. (Say 80K words, 320 ms. pages, 10 pages an hour, 32 hours, 25 bucks an hour.)"
There are a variety of reasons to believe that the numbers H. are putting out are _extremely_ accurate representations of what freelancers who do work for "legacy publishers" are charging "legacy publishers" for "proofreading". H. works in the field. H. knows people who work in the field. H. hangs out on listservs populated by people who work in the field. It's pretty easy to find web pages for people offering work of this nature for sale and they quote numbers that work out exactly the same.
I pointed to this:
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/04/guest-post-by-diana-cox.html
In which Diana Cox offers to proofread for a price that looks like a third of the going rate and (in case you're thinking maybe this is a teaser rate) then offers half off to get business going. H. questions whether Ms. Cox could possibly come out of this even with minimum wage, and I'm prepared to agree that it looks kinda dodgy under the half off deal, but I assume that's not what we're discussing. National minimum wage right now is $7.25 and I believe Ms. Cox won't have any trouble getting that, even assuming a proofreading rate such as described by H. OTOH, this is probably a contract rate, thus, no employer paying half of social security, etc. and under that theory, probably not making minimum wage.
So what's going on here? A "proofreader" offering to work for 1/3rd the going rate might be a hobbyist -- they aren't trying to make a living off this. They might be able to do the job while engaged in other work (say, security guard, receptionist, taxi driver, child care provider, etc.) or in the interstices of daily life. Getting _any_ work might be more important to them than getting well-compensated work. A professional "proofreader" prepared to not work rather than accept a lower pay scale is going to have trouble if the world starts to contain a lot of people of this nature.
A "proofreader" offering to work for 1/3rd the going rate might live in a place where there _is_ no work (but the cost of living is low). They might be in prison. They might be largely unemployable in a typical context. Again, any work better than none. The big risk here to professional proofreaders would be if a whole bunch of English speaking people in another country (India, say) did a comparable job proofreading; outsourcing really damages US pay scales.
"Legacy publishers" have cut a _lot_ of proofreading corners. I'm still annoyed at the elicit/illicit error I spotted in a Leslie Lafoy novel about a week ago, and it wasn't the lone error in that book, either. The bar might be lowered enough that the quality offered by professional "proofreaders" isn't perceived as required. This worse-is-better phenomenon is likely to be quite strong with ebooks, if many authors are still doing everything themselves with predictable results.
It's important, too, to remember that _authors_ may not be making $25/hour. It's awful hard to convince an author to pay a proofreader more than they are making themselves.
However, I don't think this is actually what's going on at all. I think the pay scale that proofreaders expect reflects the workflow that they must cope with in the "legacy publishing" environment. They _already_ discount (altho not heavily) if the work is all-digital, as opposed to on paper. For authors who have already successfully DIY'ed to kindle and other epublishing platforms and are probably _composing_ in something very close to the formats they expect, there's no need for a proofreader who can detect a lot of what proofreaders are paid to detect (botched conversions, dropped text, etc.). Konrath et al are likely producing something that mostly needs a pre-reader: someone who can catch the their/they're/there problems, elicit vs. illicit and other word-os, and have the good sense to not mess with authorial style or dialect or idiosyncratic dialog and so forth. I don't _know_ that among Konrath's complaints about legacy publishers are complaints about proofreaders who want to "correct" dialect in dialog, but I sure would not be surprised to find out that a guy who talks about "lateral changes" made by proofreaders is more worried about overly aggressive proofreading than he is about someone who misses something once in a while.
If the e-author wants a pre-reader, rather than a traditional proofreader, we could imagine that service being provided a whole lot _faster_ and _cheaper_ than traditional proofreading, and it would not involve knowledge such as the meaning and use of the term "stet" or all those weird little marks, for that matter. And that is what I suspect is going on with Ms. Cox's service.
ETA: Comments on this entry have been locked. I apologize, however, there have been no legitimate additions in quite a while and I've been having to delete screened/suspicious comments daily or more often for over a week on this post and I'm sick of it.
"The comments keep talking about the upfront costs being maybe $800, presumably including copyediting AND proofreading AND cover design AND formatting. Sod that for a game of soldiers. Proofreading alone could easily be that much, if you pay any sort of decent wage. (Say 80K words, 320 ms. pages, 10 pages an hour, 32 hours, 25 bucks an hour.)"
There are a variety of reasons to believe that the numbers H. are putting out are _extremely_ accurate representations of what freelancers who do work for "legacy publishers" are charging "legacy publishers" for "proofreading". H. works in the field. H. knows people who work in the field. H. hangs out on listservs populated by people who work in the field. It's pretty easy to find web pages for people offering work of this nature for sale and they quote numbers that work out exactly the same.
I pointed to this:
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/04/guest-post-by-diana-cox.html
In which Diana Cox offers to proofread for a price that looks like a third of the going rate and (in case you're thinking maybe this is a teaser rate) then offers half off to get business going. H. questions whether Ms. Cox could possibly come out of this even with minimum wage, and I'm prepared to agree that it looks kinda dodgy under the half off deal, but I assume that's not what we're discussing. National minimum wage right now is $7.25 and I believe Ms. Cox won't have any trouble getting that, even assuming a proofreading rate such as described by H. OTOH, this is probably a contract rate, thus, no employer paying half of social security, etc. and under that theory, probably not making minimum wage.
So what's going on here? A "proofreader" offering to work for 1/3rd the going rate might be a hobbyist -- they aren't trying to make a living off this. They might be able to do the job while engaged in other work (say, security guard, receptionist, taxi driver, child care provider, etc.) or in the interstices of daily life. Getting _any_ work might be more important to them than getting well-compensated work. A professional "proofreader" prepared to not work rather than accept a lower pay scale is going to have trouble if the world starts to contain a lot of people of this nature.
A "proofreader" offering to work for 1/3rd the going rate might live in a place where there _is_ no work (but the cost of living is low). They might be in prison. They might be largely unemployable in a typical context. Again, any work better than none. The big risk here to professional proofreaders would be if a whole bunch of English speaking people in another country (India, say) did a comparable job proofreading; outsourcing really damages US pay scales.
"Legacy publishers" have cut a _lot_ of proofreading corners. I'm still annoyed at the elicit/illicit error I spotted in a Leslie Lafoy novel about a week ago, and it wasn't the lone error in that book, either. The bar might be lowered enough that the quality offered by professional "proofreaders" isn't perceived as required. This worse-is-better phenomenon is likely to be quite strong with ebooks, if many authors are still doing everything themselves with predictable results.
It's important, too, to remember that _authors_ may not be making $25/hour. It's awful hard to convince an author to pay a proofreader more than they are making themselves.
However, I don't think this is actually what's going on at all. I think the pay scale that proofreaders expect reflects the workflow that they must cope with in the "legacy publishing" environment. They _already_ discount (altho not heavily) if the work is all-digital, as opposed to on paper. For authors who have already successfully DIY'ed to kindle and other epublishing platforms and are probably _composing_ in something very close to the formats they expect, there's no need for a proofreader who can detect a lot of what proofreaders are paid to detect (botched conversions, dropped text, etc.). Konrath et al are likely producing something that mostly needs a pre-reader: someone who can catch the their/they're/there problems, elicit vs. illicit and other word-os, and have the good sense to not mess with authorial style or dialect or idiosyncratic dialog and so forth. I don't _know_ that among Konrath's complaints about legacy publishers are complaints about proofreaders who want to "correct" dialect in dialog, but I sure would not be surprised to find out that a guy who talks about "lateral changes" made by proofreaders is more worried about overly aggressive proofreading than he is about someone who misses something once in a while.
If the e-author wants a pre-reader, rather than a traditional proofreader, we could imagine that service being provided a whole lot _faster_ and _cheaper_ than traditional proofreading, and it would not involve knowledge such as the meaning and use of the term "stet" or all those weird little marks, for that matter. And that is what I suspect is going on with Ms. Cox's service.
ETA: Comments on this entry have been locked. I apologize, however, there have been no legitimate additions in quite a while and I've been having to delete screened/suspicious comments daily or more often for over a week on this post and I'm sick of it.
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freelance editing rates
Date: 2011-04-26 11:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-26 11:14 pm (UTC)Why? Nearly every professional service I get, from hairdressing on up, costs more per hour than I make. The hairdresser doesn't GET more than I do (overhead and all), but I sure do pay that much. (Not saying I mind this -- it makes perfect sense economically -- only that it is so.)
not sure how to respond to that
Date: 2011-04-27 01:09 am (UTC)There are a lot of reasons to do something oneself vs hiring it done. Ignoring things like _can_ you do it (there's a pretty compelling case to be made that virtually no one can do as good a job proofing their own work as they can unfamiliar work, and some authors really could not possibly proof anything) and whether you can _stand_ to do it, and looking purely at the money, a broke-ass author who is self publishing to eke out more money from a small number of sales (by maximizing their royalty -- and getting published at all) is unlikely to be willing to pay someone more than what their hourly rate works out to if they can possibly help it.
However, a hobbyist author might be perfectly happy to pay someone more than their hourly rate works out to, especially if the detail work of proofreading makes them want to go shoot themselves.
Since this all falls firmly within the realm of speculation (about what other people might or might not care to do) and we may also be violently in agreement but expressing ourselves slightly differently, I'm perfectly prepared to concede that you are right, altho not entirely prepared to concede that I am wrong.
ETA: To correct some errors, which bother me more than they should when I'm writing about finding errors in written work. *sigh*
no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 04:27 pm (UTC)I have even had one packager request a list of corrections in Word rather than marking up the PDF. Now THAT took a hideous amount of time -- p 3 para 2 elicit should be illicit, etc. I am not sure I made minimum wage on that job. More recently I have been able to export a list of corrections from Acrobat into Word to satisfy this requirement. Still a bit tedious, but much much faster, as the page numbers go in automatically. Why they want it done this way is completely beyond me, but if I can manage to make my target rate doing it, okay -- it's their dime, their time.
I am VERY dubious about there being many fewer format problems if you have authors essentially trying to do their own layout. That sounds to me like an actual recipe for format problems -- different ones, perhaps, but just as bad.
I have no problem with people deciding to do something themselves or getting an amateur to do it, and taking the consequences if any. People do that with haircuts and such all the time. I do have a problem with stuff like that one guy saying it is "cruel" for a professional editor to "empty out [starving authors'] checking accounts." A hell of a lot of the editors I know are "people struggling after some career upheaval, or in a single-income situation." In my world, freelance editing should be the kind of thing that, say, a single mom could manage to be not-quite-poor on. If you can't afford to hire a pro, just DON'T DO IT, but don't exploit people like Diana. (Especially if you're the kind of author who's trying like heck to get as much of the publishing money for yourself as possible -- yeah, authors have gotten a raw deal for ages, but SO HAVE EDITORS.)
I also see this as very much a feminist issue -- women are the ones most likely to need this kind of interstitial job, and they're easier to exploit.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 07:18 pm (UTC)thanks for the reassurance
Date: 2011-04-27 07:34 pm (UTC)Discounts for digital proofreading
Date: 2011-04-27 07:33 pm (UTC)"Express Proofreading
If your work is already polished and only needs a quick read for minor errors, we can offer you low rates and a fast turnaround time.
$2.00/page when marking hard copy
$1.95/page for corrected file copy"
I believe this service to be interesting for two reasons. (1) it shows a discount for in-file correcting and (2) it shows a discounted rate for a proofing/pre-reading service that is intermediate between standard proofreading pricing and the very low rates offered by Ms. Cox. This services regular rates are comparable to what H. mentioned in the original FB comment.
This may well be a feminist issue, however, many of the authors who would be proposing to use such a service are themselves "broke-ass", so I'm not sure I'm prepared to blame anyone in particular. I know you lay into Konrath in the next comment, but he was using these services earlier in the process when he wasn't making that much, and he's pointing people at these services who _are not_ making that much. It's hard for me to judge (altho I most certainly will, when I get into just why it is that so many of the gung-ho self-pubbers are (a) male and (b) writing thriller/horror titles).
Re: Discounts for digital proofreading
Date: 2011-04-27 08:47 pm (UTC)The broke-ass writers wouldn't treat a barber that way -- if you're making minimum wage, is it okay to go into a Supercuts and say "I want you to cut my hair for three dollars"? Because that's essentially what these folks are doing -- they're taking already very low rates and boohooing about not being able to afford them. It's kind of like saying that broke-ass people are less guilty if they steal things. Well, yeah, it's less heinous of a minimum wage worker to steal a few bucks than it would be for you or me, but it would still be stealing, and morally reprehensible unless s/he really needed it to survive. Poor people can exploit each other, just as much as they can steal from each other. Happens all the time.
J.R.R. Tolkien couldn't afford to get LOTR professionally typed "by the ten-fingered" (I have seen this interpreted as his being missing a finger, like Frodo, but of course it just means he typed with two fingers), so he did it himself, more than once. He didn't go get a typist and offer her a penny a sheet when the going rate was sixpence.
Incidentally, I have probably told you the story of sitting on the floor while my mother was typing her latest manuscript and reading it page by page as it emerged from the typewriter. She got pretty sick of my complaining about how slowly she typed and how many mistakes she made. (My dad, who had done some professional proofreading, read the proofs for her.)
Oh, re Indian editing: I've actually had one project FROM an Indian book packager (who was working for a US-based publisher). I don't think they're finding all the skills they need so easily over there.
Re: Discounts for digital proofreading
Date: 2011-04-27 10:11 pm (UTC)I think your comparison to asking for a discount at Supercuts or stealing is extremely unfair. Ms. Cox is _offering_ her service at that rate, which is really not all that different from what the person who temps through Compass Rose probably gets, and assuming they are able to "preread" or "proof" or whatever you care to call this service at a sufficiently speedy rate, are making more than someone at Supercuts anyway. There is no evidence that Konrath or anyone else is applying pressure to Ms. Cox to offer her service at that rate.
I really, really, really do understand issues of self-exploitation. At the same time, I can't help but think that if Ms. Cox is happy with the rate she's getting, and the authors are happy with the rate they're paying, and no laws are being broken and no existing union agreement is being violated, it's probably kinda dodgy to be complaining about it. I got into this because I was trying to understand _what is actually happening_. I'd hate to see "how we think the world should work" interfere with my ability to understand reality on the ground.
Re: Discounts for digital proofreading
Date: 2011-04-28 01:35 am (UTC)JK keeps saying things like "I feel all writers need to be made aware that there is finally an option. Not just an option, but an actual preferable alternative to signing away your rights," and as far as I can see I'm saying much the same kind of thing.
Re: Discounts for digital proofreading
Date: 2011-04-28 02:17 am (UTC)Tangential stuff...
Date: 2011-04-28 02:21 am (UTC)Free lance photographers are also watching the money go away. There are two things going on here. 1. The big archive of stock photos (getty images) has grown so huge that sending a 'tog out to "take a photo of X" has been replaced by "check Getty for a photo of X". And 2. Getty (and maybe others) have been looking through flicker & other photo sites to find good photographers and pictures. They then contact the (usually amateur) photographer and license digital images for a small amount of money ($5 or $10 each). By regular freelance photographer standards, that's just terrible.
Market... previously inefficient (using the economics term of jargon)... Internet... Shrug.