Whether you are editing books or articles, do you have a flat fee per page or hour, or are you prepared to cut your rates?
I am not suggesting that you should work for less overall, but there is a case for having discussions about the scope of your editing.
An example of the circumstances which can arise is the work which is being done to a budget. There has been an allocation within the budget for the work of editing and for layout. Both of these categories can sufffer from being near the end of the process and finding that costs have overrun at previous stages so there are only these last stages where cuts can be made. This may not be fair but it happens.
Sometimes layout work can be reduced by a degree of automation -- making the publication fit templates that already exist and reducing the complexity of the layout so there are fewer places where text has to run around illustrations. It may also be possible to run a long work over fewer pages by reducing text size so that production costs are reduced.
There are fewer ways in which editing costs can be cut.
Ways in which such costs can be reduced include reducing the time which will be spent on rewriting or on fact checking provided others in the process are prepared to take responsibility for such things being done at an earlier stage. Some of this comes down to a decision by the overall editor or publisher on whether the author is trusted (Nearly all author contracts require the author to take this responsibility and to indemnify the publisher).
It can mean deciding that the copyeditor is to increase the number of pages or number of words processed in each hour. Is quality to suffer? It may but there are times when a decision has to be made that the end result is "good enough".
This is a generally accepted process on newspapers and on many magazines. The deadline is fixed. As it approaches, so the final editorial processes which might have included rewrites come to focus on avoiding errors which would make the publication look bad. As the hands on the clock rotate ever faster you might hear a call to check proofs for "heads and intros" maybe with an added check to see that column ends read on to the top of the next column.
Fortunate is the editorial desk where a second edition will allow for more corrections later.
Similarly with freelance editing, the worker may have to work to a specific deadline. Sometimes the copyeditor may feel that quality has been compromised to the extent that he or she would rather not have their name associated with the work. However the skilled editor will still be able to justly claim that the limited job done is still better than it would be if a less skilled person had been involved.
So, do you insist on working to the standards you set for yourself or are you prepared to work to a budget and still feel that you did a good job in the circumstances?
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