4 ms·

Editors are expensive and publishers don't really provide that service to authors, anymore. You're expected to have that all taken care of before you submit, ev

Editors are expensive and publishers don't really provide that service to authors, anymore. You're expected to have that all taken care of before you submit, even to publications that barely pay (or even some that don't pay at all).

vorpalhex 4y ago
Editors are expensive. There's also a reason most publishers who have stopped using them have experienced a major decline. Skilled labor is expensive. Editors are skilled labor. Those who use them will benefit from that labor.
- corrral 4y ago
  Yes, editors are wonderful and ought to be paid well (even if authors aren't...) but authors who can't afford editors (i.e. all the ones trying to break in to writing but who don't have substantial financial backing) benefit greatly from tools that help them do their own editing more efficiently.
  - leephillips 4y ago
    I don’t believe it (but am willing to consider actual evidence, if any exists). Spellcheckers, sure. But until we get an actual AI with general intelligence and cultural awareness sufficient to understand the nuances of human language, even “grammar checking” can not be mechanized. Really, anyone considering working as an author who can’t produce an excellent, polished first draft without an editor should consider a line of work more attuned to his or her talents.
    - corrral 4y ago
      Sure, maybe, but the better automated tools get, the higher standards will be before submissions are considered. I bet slush-pile readers were a lot more tolerant of the occasional tranpsosed letter before spell check existed, for instance. Now if there's even one misspelling in a piece it looks like you're not trying at all, since you should have seen the red-squiggle, and into the rejections you go. So it will become (already is becoming) for brevity, clear wording, avoiding repetition, et c. If tools save time or reduce the technical skill required, that seems great to me. Art's about the finished product, not how it gets there, though popular understanding of how artists work and how they actually work may differ substantially. Almost no authors can always recall the exact word they want, the precise wording of that phrase they want to quote, the rule for some particular piece of grammar, and so on—they may have a whole shelf of Brewer's and Roget's and Webster's and Garner's and Strunk & White for that, plus computerized tools, these days. Why not have tools for the other aspects of editing? Why not have a computer find a suggestion for you, before you even think to consult a source or scrutinize a passage more closely? Plus, I guess I don't care much about any sort of purity in the writing process since practically the only accepted style, these days, in English writing at any rate, is fairly rote and prescribed and very simple. Did that sentence seem too complex? Did it have too many clauses? Does your inner editor's voice pipe up while reading it? Yep, exactly—it violates that very-modern style, even if only a bit. May as well take the next step and let a machine enforce those rules. More generally, as a lover of books and reading and writing, I'm pessimistic about the future of the whole enterprise. I think making a living as a writer, outside the usual handful of trust fund minor-celebrity lit-fic authors, is going to involve a lot of machine assistance, to the point that "writing" will mostly be massaging and curating the output of machines. Ghostwriters beware—and/or get ready to quintuple your output, using new tools, just to keep your head above water. In the meantime, a little help from tools like this might get the last generation of small-time authors, with actual ideas of their own but without an eye for editing, to print, before that becomes all but impossible even for the very-talented. It's a good thing there's already enough excellent fully-human-produced writing to last even fairly-avid readers several lifetimes. At least until and unless life extension really gets going. [EDIT] I'm aware, incidentally, that some of these paragraphs disagree with one another. I stand by my contradictions. :-)
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      > Really, anyone considering working as an author who can’t produce an excellent, polished first draft without an editor should consider a line of work more attuned to his or her talents. Really, anyone considering being a programmer who can't write a program without bugs on the first try without an IDE should... Yeah that seems overly harsh and incorrect. Skills take time and practice to develop.
leephillips 4y ago
I make most of my income from writing. My experience is the opposite of this. https://lee-phillips.org/whypay/ https://lee-phillips.org/whypay/
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  As a heads up, this is not loading for me. Your other pages seem fine, and I'm not getting a 404, just an empty page. Doesn't seem to be adblock or pihole.
  - leephillips 4y ago
    Thanks for the heads up. It’s fixed now.
- corrral 4y ago
  Page is blank for me and I couldn't find a version though your site's search. Your experience is that editors are cheap and that publishers readily supply substantial editing services, not requiring that practically all editing work is done before entertaining a submission? That's contrary to the experience of multiple close friends and relatives who are writers or are working on getting published, and to that of multiple others I follow whose experiences I've heard or read about.
  - leephillips 4y ago
    Sorry about that. I don’t know how it happened, but it’s fixed now. I don’t know what you mean by editors being cheap. I don’t pay them, they’re employees of the publications I write for. I assume they’re underpaid, of course. My first draft is better than the finished product you’ll find in most publications (not bragging, it’s just the truth). Before it’s published, however, it goes through several rounds of editing with from one to three editors, and a technical review. This can last weeks. I may have to generate five revisions before it’s good enough. It could be that your acquaintances are writing for publications with lower standards. EDIT: By the way, if you have friends who are submitting to publications that don’t pay, or pay only a token amount, please suggest to them that they stop. This depresses the market for writers who are tying to make a living with it. Don’t fall for the “exposure” gambit or give away your stuff to feed your ego. You‘re being robbed.

vorpalhex 4y ago

Editors are expensive. There's also a reason most publishers who have stopped using them have experienced a major decline. Skilled labor is expensive. Editors are skilled labor. Those who use them will benefit from that labor.

corrral 4y ago
Yes, editors are wonderful and ought to be paid well (even if authors aren't...) but authors who can't afford editors (i.e. all the ones trying to break in to writing but who don't have substantial financial backing) benefit greatly from tools that help them do their own editing more efficiently.
- leephillips 4y ago
  I don’t believe it (but am willing to consider actual evidence, if any exists). Spellcheckers, sure. But until we get an actual AI with general intelligence and cultural awareness sufficient to understand the nuances of human language, even “grammar checking” can not be mechanized. Really, anyone considering working as an author who can’t produce an excellent, polished first draft without an editor should consider a line of work more attuned to his or her talents.
  - corrral 4y ago
    Sure, maybe, but the better automated tools get, the higher standards will be before submissions are considered. I bet slush-pile readers were a lot more tolerant of the occasional tranpsosed letter before spell check existed, for instance. Now if there's even one misspelling in a piece it looks like you're not trying at all, since you should have seen the red-squiggle, and into the rejections you go. So it will become (already is becoming) for brevity, clear wording, avoiding repetition, et c. If tools save time or reduce the technical skill required, that seems great to me. Art's about the finished product, not how it gets there, though popular understanding of how artists work and how they actually work may differ substantially. Almost no authors can always recall the exact word they want, the precise wording of that phrase they want to quote, the rule for some particular piece of grammar, and so on—they may have a whole shelf of Brewer's and Roget's and Webster's and Garner's and Strunk & White for that, plus computerized tools, these days. Why not have tools for the other aspects of editing? Why not have a computer find a suggestion for you, before you even think to consult a source or scrutinize a passage more closely? Plus, I guess I don't care much about any sort of purity in the writing process since practically the only accepted style, these days, in English writing at any rate, is fairly rote and prescribed and very simple. Did that sentence seem too complex? Did it have too many clauses? Does your inner editor's voice pipe up while reading it? Yep, exactly—it violates that very-modern style, even if only a bit. May as well take the next step and let a machine enforce those rules. More generally, as a lover of books and reading and writing, I'm pessimistic about the future of the whole enterprise. I think making a living as a writer, outside the usual handful of trust fund minor-celebrity lit-fic authors, is going to involve a lot of machine assistance, to the point that "writing" will mostly be massaging and curating the output of machines. Ghostwriters beware—and/or get ready to quintuple your output, using new tools, just to keep your head above water. In the meantime, a little help from tools like this might get the last generation of small-time authors, with actual ideas of their own but without an eye for editing, to print, before that becomes all but impossible even for the very-talented. It's a good thing there's already enough excellent fully-human-produced writing to last even fairly-avid readers several lifetimes. At least until and unless life extension really gets going. [EDIT] I'm aware, incidentally, that some of these paragraphs disagree with one another. I stand by my contradictions. :-)
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    > Really, anyone considering working as an author who can’t produce an excellent, polished first draft without an editor should consider a line of work more attuned to his or her talents. Really, anyone considering being a programmer who can't write a program without bugs on the first try without an IDE should... Yeah that seems overly harsh and incorrect. Skills take time and practice to develop.

leephillips 4y ago

I make most of my income from writing. My experience is the opposite of this. https://lee-phillips.org/whypay/ https://lee-phillips.org/whypay/

vorpalhex 4y ago
As a heads up, this is not loading for me. Your other pages seem fine, and I'm not getting a 404, just an empty page. Doesn't seem to be adblock or pihole.
- leephillips 4y ago
  Thanks for the heads up. It’s fixed now.
corrral 4y ago
Page is blank for me and I couldn't find a version though your site's search. Your experience is that editors are cheap and that publishers readily supply substantial editing services, not requiring that practically all editing work is done before entertaining a submission? That's contrary to the experience of multiple close friends and relatives who are writers or are working on getting published, and to that of multiple others I follow whose experiences I've heard or read about.
- leephillips 4y ago
  Sorry about that. I don’t know how it happened, but it’s fixed now. I don’t know what you mean by editors being cheap. I don’t pay them, they’re employees of the publications I write for. I assume they’re underpaid, of course. My first draft is better than the finished product you’ll find in most publications (not bragging, it’s just the truth). Before it’s published, however, it goes through several rounds of editing with from one to three editors, and a technical review. This can last weeks. I may have to generate five revisions before it’s good enough. It could be that your acquaintances are writing for publications with lower standards. EDIT: By the way, if you have friends who are submitting to publications that don’t pay, or pay only a token amount, please suggest to them that they stop. This depresses the market for writers who are tying to make a living with it. Don’t fall for the “exposure” gambit or give away your stuff to feed your ego. You‘re being robbed.