Has the Definition of Proofreading Changed?
A 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.
