Editing Factories - A Little More Information

Not to be Confused with "Editing Factories"

Quite frankly, I was surprised to note that the term "editing factory" had already been used in the following context: something having to do with enabling one to edit movies, enhance web pages, and associated software.

What I mean by an editing factory is what the freelance book editing industry has become seeking all the independent, agent-less, and non-traditionaly-published writers. In other words, writers who are going it alone and need their work edited, mainly for self-publishing, are the target clients for editing factories. Writers decide to self-publish for a variety of reasons, and self-publishing (usually through a POD company) is becoming the publishing  goal of hundreds of thousands of writers. I've done it myself after having been published traditionally. Writers want to take control of their own timetable for getting their work out to the public, and the smart writers know they need to have their books professionally edited before submitting them to self-publishing companies.

So there's a whole industry that has sprung up to accommodate those writers who want to make sure their books are competitive, competently edited, and ready for typesetting, which in turn will make their books appear as well-done as the traditionally published writer. Since the traditional book publishing industry is controlled by only five mega-companies, it is no wonder that new writers find it increasingly difficult to break into print the old way; and the old way was the new way near the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century. Before that...guess what...writers did it themselves.

So the editing factories I am referring to are those that have become big companies that hire a lot of freelance editors who work for wages. Elance.com, for example hires thousands of editors, each one hoping to get an editing assignment through Elance.com. You can almost see a big room with editors on staff working in cubicles, getting assignments and having their work quality-checked by another set of staff. Another such company is Scribendi, although my perusal of it did not show that it was for book-length manuscripts. Scribendi has over eight hundred editors waiting for an assignment. Although in reality the editors work at home on their own computers and download the assignments and upload the edited manuscripts back to the factory they work for.

The main characteristic of these factories is that the editors never meet the writers whose books they edit. Instead, the writer and editor are deliberately kept apart, and all correspondence between the writer who might have questions and the editor who answers them are handled by the go-between. Why do you think these factories don't want the editor and writer to be able to identify each other? Because they don't want the writer and editor to go off together and work on the manuscript by themselves. First, it would cut down on the income stream to the company. It's much better to keep the writer enthrall to silver, gold, and diamond services packages of various levels of edit and keep the editor on something a little more than minimum wage.

Are the editors who work for these factories good editors? Many of them are college students who manage to pass the editing tests the company gives them. They're not seasoned writers or editors. They're learning as they go. But these "editors" are seasoned and good enough to pass their quality checks on the manuscripts they edit. Not only are they given quality assurance tests, but they are required to return work that hits all the marks in the company's quality-check forms.

Spelling
Grammar

• Subject/verb agreement
• Pronoun reference/agreement
• Proper diction
• Proper comma usage
• Punctuation, in general
• Sentence fragments
• Run-on sentences
• Dangling participles
• Left-out word
• Number
• Citations/Endnotes
• Etc.

Then the QC wants to know if the editor

• Pointed out colloquialisms not in dialogue
• Pointed out wordiness (whenever possible)
• Did dialogue punctuation correctly
• Pointed out inconsistencies in character names

Concerns with formatting

Now, besides these obvious kinds of errors in a manuscript, and especially if we're dealing with fiction, these factories also want to make sure that editors cover a number of content and development issues:

Plot
Subplot
Character development
Description of setting and character
Structure in a three-act type of arrangement (usually)

But what is lacking in this kind of "artificial-intelligence" developmental editing is leaving out the creative aspects of editing. The factories want to see manuscripts drenched in the proverbial red ink, the more the obviously better a manuscript has been edited. But let's also be realistic, editing is done in these factories in a time-crunch system. Will the editor ponder a better way to develop the plot, take into account the three main types of conflict in all stories, fit the characters to the type of conflict that arrises, tailor the description of place and time to the needs of the story? Probably not in any truly meaningful way. I call this "artificial-intelligence" editing because the QC factors the factory managers have devised are basically checklists. The dream of some software companies is to devise intelligent grammar checking programs, but anyone who is a thinking, engaged writer will soon despair of using such software to better revise prose that is rhythmic, almost poetic in description, mood evoking in its unique way of expressing an idea, an action, or a character's personality.

I picked a grammar-checking software program at random on the Internet and used its "try it" button. I gave the checker two bad sentences to see how they would be improved:

Example 1

Test sentence: The Jews in World War 2 were sent to concentration camps by the Nazis and were treated badly. 

Corrected by grammar checker: The Jews in World War 2 were sent to concentration camps by the Nazis are being treated badly.
 

Example 2

Test sentence: Me and Jan got up in the morning, then he and I ran to the lake where we engaged in the process of swimming. 

Corrected by grammar checker: Grammar checker said there were no mistakes.

Example 1 is at the very least partially cast in passive voice, but there are also incorrect spelling/expressions in the sentence. The correction, which is the second sentence in each example is made even worse. Not only did the grammar checker NOT correct the passive voice, it also created an issue with verb tense. Nor did this "artificial intelligence" grammar software recognize just what the intent of the sentence might be.

Example 2 is even worse, since the grammar check said there were no mistakes. "Me and Jan got up" is incorrect. Should be Jan and I got up..." We NEVER use the object pronoun "me" in the subject pronoun's place in a sentence. And "engaged in the process of swimming" is unnecessarily wordy.

These examples illustrate only that artificial-intelligence grammar-checking programs are not there yet and that we still need a human touch. Now, how does this relate to editing factories and the thousands of editors (freshly minted college students, mostly) working there? By the very concept of the quality check forms that an editor's work is tested against when he/she has uploaded a freshly edited manuscript. Those doing the quality check will run the manuscript through a grammar and spell checker. You don't expect the QC people to also edit each manuscript, do you? The QC person also only spot checks a few pages here and there. Further, there is no way to "spot check" developmental editing, and yet these companies really kick into high gear with their up charges when it comes to developmental book editing—as much as 3.5 cents per word. In a hundred-thousand-word manuscript that's $3500.00. How much in royalties through book sales will it take to just break even?

The only true relationship that an editor and writer have that works as a collaborative effort is for the editor and writer to communicate directly with each other, and editing factories are simply not designed to allow this. Instead, writers should look for independent editors and bypass the editing factories, unless all the writer wants is a proofread manuscript, not a truly edited one.