I understand that they have their own paperwork to file, and that the bean counters think that estimating time to copyedit or proof a book ought to be as straightforward as estimating time for a delivery of rocks. But it doesn't work that way.
You can give a book a quick going-over, but that won't tell you if the author is using half-baked or completely unbaked sources, is mistranslating foreign words, is making wild suppositions hidden by passive language, or a hundred other things that make a book a pillar of lies. As a fact-checker it is not enough to say "WRONG!" like Dom DeLuise in Blazing Saddles, although it would be satisfying. I'm expected to provide the right information, or exhaust all efforts to find it.
Actually, the proofreading is not too difficult to estimate, since by doing a couple of pages quickly I can figure out how long and messy the job will be. Copyediting is a little harder, since it involves editing for sense and continuity, which can be an issue if the book turns out to be complicated. Estimating for fact-checking is the worst, though, because it's hard to tell right away if the author is a know-nothing dumdum who is going to ensnarl me in a world of irritation.
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| The estimate I'd like to send |
You can give a book a quick going-over, but that won't tell you if the author is using half-baked or completely unbaked sources, is mistranslating foreign words, is making wild suppositions hidden by passive language, or a hundred other things that make a book a pillar of lies. As a fact-checker it is not enough to say "WRONG!" like Dom DeLuise in Blazing Saddles, although it would be satisfying. I'm expected to provide the right information, or exhaust all efforts to find it.
The problem is, unlike your plumber who discovers hidden problems, I have little recourse when an estimate is entered. One large company in particular makes it very hard for everyone if a job comes in over estimate, and it delays payment by weeks or even months. They make strong incentives to get me to provide on-target estimates, even though there's no certain way to do it. Either I overestimate and get a rep as an over-charger, or I underestimate and wind up working free hours.
Anyhoo, it's made me more sympathetic to the contractor who finds unexpected issues like asbestos or bad wiring or unknown leaks or any of a number of things unexpected in a renovation. Sometimes you just can't tell where the big problems are hiding, in homes as in books.
2 comments:
Very interesting. Serious question, who proofs the proofreaders?
Could publishers pay a flat fee (for time spent reading) plus 50 cents or something like that per actual edit made?
They could do a 'diff' between original and edited to validate number of edits.
I suspect this would require innovation in an industry not known for it.
Usually in-house editors will go over the book after the proofreaders are done, but proofreading is usually the last stage before galleys. Of course, they are sent to the author in galleys, which means another round of corrections and proofing (at least to make sure the corrections were done properly). If the author is a control freak who makes many and huge corrections right up to the end -- Jerzy Kosinski was notorious for this -- it can get quite expensive for the publisher and even cause them to miss a press date, which can be exceptionally expensive.
Some publishers pay by the hour, some a flat fee for the job, and some by the page. By the hour is best for the humble freelancer, for the reasons I mentioned in today's complaint! I doubt any would pay per edit, since proofreaders and copyeditors could easily game the system and come up with all kinds of spurious reasons for edits and queries, especially since the process can be subjective.
Good questions, PLW!
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