Saw a fun little conversation on Threads but I don't have a Threads account, so I couldn't reply directly, but I sure can talk about it here!
I've been wanting to get into this for awhile, so here we go! First and foremost, I wanna say that "Emmaskies" here is really hitting the nail on the head despite having "no insider info". I don't want this post to be read as me shitting on trad pub editors or authors because that is fundamentally not what's happening.
Second, I want to say that this reply from Aaron Aceves is also spot on:
There are a lot of reviewers who think "I didn't enjoy this" means "no one edited this because if someone edited it, they would have made it something I like". As I talk about nonstop on this account, that is not a legitimate critique. However, as Aaron also mentions, rushed books are a thing that also happens.
As an author with 2 trad pub novels and 2 trad pub anthologies (all with HarperCollins, the 2nd largest trad publisher in the country), let me tell you that if you think books seem less edited lately, you are not making that up! It's true! Obviously, there are still a sizeable number of books that are being edited well, but something I was talking about before is that you can't really know that from picking it up. Unlike where you can generally tell an indie book will be poorly edited if the cover art is unprofessional or there are typoes all over the cover copy, trad is broken up into different departments, so even if editorial was too overworked to get a decent edit letter churned out, that doesn't mean marketing will be weak.
One person said that some publishers put more money into marketing than editorial and that's why this is happening, but I fundamentally disagree because many of these books that are getting rushed out are not getting a whole lot by way of marketing either! And I will say that I think most authors are afraid to admit if their book was rushed out or poorly edited because they don't want to sabotage their books, but guess what? I'm fucking shameless. Café Con Lychee was a rush job! That book was poorly edited! And it shows! Where Meet Cute Diary got 3 drafts from me and my beta readers, another 2 drafts with me and my agent, and then another 2 drafts with me and my editor, Café Con Lychee got a *single* concrete edit round with my editor after I turned in what was essentially a first draft. I had *three weeks* to rewrite the book before we went to copy edits. And the thing is, this wasn't my fault. I knew the book needed more work, but I wasn't allowed more time with it. My editor was so overworked, she was emailing me my edit letter at 1am. The publisher didn't care if the book was good, and then they were upset that its sales weren't as high at MCD's, but bffr. A book that doesn't live up to its potential is not going to sell at the same rate as one that does!
And this may sound like a fluke, but it's not. I'm not naming names because this is a deeply personal thing to share, but I have heard from *many* authors who were not happy with their second books. Not because they didn't love the story but because they felt so rushed either with their initial drafts or their edits that they didn't feel like it lived up to their potential. I also know of authors who demanded extra time because they knew their books weren't there yet only to face big backlash from their publisher or agent.
I literally cannot stress to you enough that publisher's *do not give a fuck* about how good their products are. If they can trick you into buying a poorly edited book with an AI cover that they undercut the author for, that is *better* than wasting time and money paying authors and editors to put together a quality product. And that's before we get into the blatant abuse that happens at these publishers and why there have been mass exoduses from Big 5 publishers lately.
There's also a problem where publishers do not value their experienced staff. They're laying off so many skilled, dedicated, long-term committed editors like their work never meant anything. And as someone who did freelance sensitivity reading for the Big 5, I can tell you that the way they treat freelancers is *also* abysmal. I was almost always given half the time I asked for and paid at less than *half* of my general going rate. Authors publishing out of their own pockets could afford my rate, but apparently multi-billion dollar corporations couldn't. Copy edits and proofreads are often handled by freelancers, meaning these are people who aren't familiar with the author's voice and often give feedback that doesn't account for that, plus they're not people who are gonna be as invested in the book, even before the bad payment and ridiculous timelines.
So, anyway, 1. go easy on authors and editors when you can. Most of us have 0 say in being in this position and authors who are in breech of their contract by refusing to turn in a book on time can face major legal and financial ramifications. 2. Know that this isn't in your head. If you disagree with the choices a book makes, that's probably just a disagreement, but if you feel like it had so much potential but just *didn't reach it*, that's likely because the author didn't have time to revise it or the editor didn't have time to give the sort of thorough edits it needed. 3. READ INDIE!!! Find the indie authors putting in the work the Big 5's won't do and support them! Stop counting on exploitative mega-corporations to do work they have no intention of doing.
Finally, to all my readers who read Café Con Lychee and loved it, thank you. I love y'all, and I appreciate y'all, and I really wish I'd been given the chance to give y'all the book you deserved. I hope I can make it up to you in 2025.
I'd like to add my perspective as a freelance copyeditor. I've done work for Big 5 publishers, small presses, academic presses, and indie authors. Some thoughts:
- It's not that freelancers aren't invested in authors' books! We are. We're vetted by publishers, we're trained, we're working remotely but we network with lots of other editors who we can reach out to when we have questions, and of course we love books and care about authors and readers. But publishers often hinder us from doing our jobs well. Some examples: A) A Big 5 publisher I work for caps copyedits at 30 hours. If a book needs more than that, the copyeditor has to get special approval, and if a copyeditor asks for special approval too many times, they might be taken off the freelancers' lists. Copyeditors are generally fairly rushed, and I saw an online discussion a few months ago where a bunch of copyeditors agreed that they're basically never given the time to do 2 full rounds of editing. B) If a copyeditor is handling a book that belongs to a series, they should be given a style sheet that helps them keep things uniform and consistent throughout the series, even if they're not personally editing each book in the series (ex: is it Gandalf the Gray or Gandalf the Grey? hobbits, orcs, and elves, or Hobbits, Orcs, and Elves? a style sheet would tell you!). I have never been given a style sheet for series books, even when I've specifically, repeatedly asked for one. The publisher literally just does not give a sh*t. Repeat: The publisher does not care about putting out good products. C) Sometimes there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen, some with ridiculous demands, and sometimes the publisher tells the copyeditor to impossibly meet all of these demands. Examples include a French-to-English translator who had translated a book and kept in all the original punctuation, even though French and English punctuation work fairly differently and there was no reason whatsoever to do this. The publisher insisted I punctuate the book strangely/stupidly to meet the translator's ridiclous misconception of what translation is. I'm 99% sure the author wouldn't have wanted this, but they weren't consulted.
- I have anecdotal evidence that the role of being a literary agent has changed massively over the last ten years. Literary agents, at their best imo, can act as excellent developmental editors, helping pre-debut authors polish very rough drafts through multiple rounds of editing that a publisher would never have the time or tolerance for. When I assisted a literary agent, this was what she did at the start of her career: Nourish a lot of writers on the basis that she believed in their potential. It paid out hugely well for her, and now she makes many millions of dollars a year, and she mostly works with the same group of authors, who write books full-time. But: All the editing is done on speculation, and as the publishing industry has become less interested in quality, that speculation has become less likely to pay off. So what I'm seeing now are literary agents who are pivoting away from doing big developmental edits. Instead, they want writers to come to them with polished manuscripts and/or an established public platform that guarantees a certain number of books sold. Lit agents who previously repped fiction are also more likely to invest only in nonfiction now. I've done informational interviews with lit agents who've told me that their main job, in terms of finding new author clients, is to just hear about who's already big and offer them a contract. You can read one lit agent's very honest take on the industry in this interview. His words are very similar to what I've heard in private from other agents.
- The indie authors I've worked for have put way more care and attention into their revisions than publishers would. Was the final product actually better than trad published work? It really depends. Indie authors might self-publish before they're seasoned writers, and that inexperience will show, but I also see indie authors write book after book and get better with each one, gaining more readers with each one, in a learn-as-you-go way that publishing no longer nurtures. I'm now wondering what the point of publishing is. To be clear: Publishing has a point. But increasingly it seems to shoot itself in the foot by ignoring its own value and acting like a leech instead. Lit agents going from being people who offered free developmental edits to being people who just sit around waiting for the next celebrity memoir to come into their inboxes are a great example.
- At a certain point I have to ask: What exactly is the traditional publishing route offering most writers anymore? It doesn't fact check. Its developmental edits are sloppy. It doesn't market. The most experienced publishing employees have just been fired. Right now, the benefits seem to be that you get a free copyedit, a free book cover, and hopefully placement in brick-and-mortar bookstores (although B&N apparently isn't stocking debut authors or something anymore? and bookstores are more open than ever before to putting self-pubbed works on their shelves. it's chaos!). Foreign and subsidiary rights are also a big deal. I'm not saying there aren't substantial benefits to trad publishing, and I'm definitely not saying that indie authors can do everything trad publishing can (selling your translation and audio rights as an indie author, for example, can be difficult or impossible). But: the benefits are dwindling, and I wonder how much lower publishing can go before it might as well not exist.
- I think that authors are going to need to do...something. I'm not sure what. I'd love to see more reader- and author-owned small presses that are invested in running the way publishing used to run: well-compensated editors, solid marketing, etc. But I know from experience that starting a publishing company is exhausting and difficult in myriad ways.
- Is more self-publishing the answer? How do indie authors not continuously get exploited by Amazon's murky KDP algorithm and other self-pub services and companies? The alternative to tradpub cannot continue to be Amazon, but Amazon gobbles up every indie-friendly company that starts to grow. How do we build strong networks of editors and beta readers, etc, that give us the same benefits old-style publishing used to offer? How can readers tell what's actually good? Tumblr is honestly the main place where I see crucial community-building happening amongst writers, editors, and beta readers, but I would love for...something...to pick up the slack of publishers. Increasingly I've been thinking about 1) editorial freelancers union?? can this exist?? and 2) an association that promotes high-quality publishing, commiting authors to acting ethically while also protecting them and their work. Kind of like how the Association of Zoos and Aquariums works: Each zoo operates independently and does its own thing, but if it's a member of the association, you know the zoo is upholding certain ethical standards. It is genuinely scary to live in a world where books aren't getting the attention they deserve pre-publication. This breakdown feels not at all disconnected by rising tides of fascism. And I'm gonna end my rant here.
So many things here are right. I'll just add:
- Trad publishing is still very much an "ivory tower" industry, and editors will stick around well into their 60's and 70's. From what I've heard/seen, you basically apprentice under one editor for years, handling only the books they give to you, until an Editor "spot" opens up (completely dictated by the C-suite and Finance) and you can hopefully prove that you're good enough to earn the title. Getting to Editor is wildly dependent on both how well the books assigned to you do (so if your managing editor hands you shitty books while they keep the good ones, you're fucked) as well as seniority (I think the fastest in-house rise to "editor" is something like 7 years, maybe 5 if you job hop every 2 years). Meanwhile, the pay at these lower levels is $45,000. People straight out of college can make this work for a year or two, but at least 7, probably closer to 10??? Straight up unworkable for most. The only other option is to have money coming in from somewhere else (parents, spouse, etc.). So you have the promise of many long years of drudgery for very little pay, with just a North Star hope that you can break into the upper echelon.
- Editors don't just read and edit manuscripts, they're also project managers for their books. They coordinate between multiple departments including design, marketing, and the actual production of printing and shipping the book. This means they're doing a FUCK TON of admin shit in addition to actually reading and editing. When the editor wants to pick up an author/manuscript, they have to pitch it to the Senior Editors as to why it's a worthwhile book to publish, which affects a lot of what books actually get published. When you have 2-6 books all scheduled to be released around the same time of year, multiplied by the multiple release "bursts" within a year, that leads to an insane workload and none of the books getting the care they deserve. The upper echelons do not care; you just won't be promoted, while your colleague who works nights and weekends will.
- Trad publishing is focusing on trying to financially stay afloat, which affects the entire viewpoint and direction of the industry. COVID skyrocketed shipping costs, which the ripple effects are still being felt. Actual printers are shutting down, meaning that competitive pricing for producing the books is going away. The rise of Amazon, who really underprices books because there are other areas of the company that can support them financially, and the shuttering of traditional bookstores means that consumers have an idea of what the price of a book should be that is rapidly approaching the cost to actually make the book, nevermind pay the staff that goes into producing the book, or even pay the author. Most books never sell enough to meet the author advance; usually only surprise bestsellers generate royalties for the author. Most trad publishers are eating that cost right now by trying to churn out "guaranteed seller" books of authors that already have a huge fanbase that is likely to buy it, like big TikTokers or YouTubers. It's a downward spiral of only chasing the quick easy money, because it feels like there's no time to invest in products that are actually good.
Anyway, I have lots more thoughts but that's all I'll say for now.
That last point is only partially true, and built on a HUGE misconception that leads to people thinking authors are "overpaid".
Most books never sell enough to meet the author advance, but that doesn't mean trad publishers are "eating that cost". ALL books earn a profit for the publisher before the advance is earned out (authors only get 6-10% of each print sale), so when a book "fails to earn out an advance", that DOES NOT mean that it "failed to earn a profit". Penguin Random House (largest publisher in the US) proved this when they gave the advance amounts they pay out to authors based on expected sales during their DOJ trial. Most books can earn out half of their advance OR LESS and still earn a profit for the publisher, and given the all around lack of marketing, decreased editing and overworked staff, lower advances, etc. that amount is probably even lower now.
Publishers made *record profits* during the pandemic and responded by raising prices, cutting staff, lowering advances, etc. so don't let anyone convince you that the reason publishers are underpaying all around is because they're barely making an income. That is propaganda!!!
