This used to be the selling point of publishing through Springer, for instance. But now it seems very little editing or copyediting is done. I am reading "Novelty, Information, and Surprise" put out by Springer in 2012 (math/stats/information theory) and there are two typos in the first paragraph of the introduction. It doesn't feel like the rest of the writing saw an editor either.
I'm looking for the rise of a more streamlined process for hiring your own editor as people realize that publishing through the mainstream doesn't get you editing or royalties (although it still does give a lot of street cred or something to put on your CV!).
Publishers, however, take their share per-copy. And, IIRC, the final profits are divided about 50/50 between author and publisher.
Charlie may be leaving a significant chunk of money on the table, given his popularity.
I wonder how much more work it would be to get a good relationship with a single priced editing service over a traditional publisher. Hey, maybe you could even get your agent to do that.
It seems to me that a combination of technology and time should be sufficient.
I know I have read books that seem to have missed spell check... Really annoying.
Also, I say again: copyeditors and proofreaders are cheap. Doing that work myself makes about as much sense as doing anything else I could outsource cheaply.
That's the proper way to write it. If you want the other meaning, it's "My parents - Ayn Rand and God". You English people really should learn proper punctuation - most of the world has been using these things called dashes, colons, etc. for quite a while now. They help immensely to disambiguate.
