Truth told, I glanced about the forum for a place to post it and found nothing specific, so it ended up here. I think you all have a good idea and if you wanted to move my post to such a forum (or merge it with a stuck thread somewhere devoted to events, as an act stopping short of creating a whole forum), that would make sense to me.

Surtac wrote:

Interesting perspective, KelJ.  I had forgotten that you were / are in the trade.

As a follow-up question if I may, whose job is it to catch that sort of consistency error and at what stage of the publishing process?
 

Here the verb tense is important, because the present tense implies that someone's actually bothering these days. I don't see much evidence of that; if someone is bothering, they seem not to be bothering in a competent fashion. The most responsive answer I can give is a long one.

I was never employed as an editor by an actual publisher, so I must suppose how it was. I reckon that houses had staff editors perform line edits (tone, style, and consistency), perhaps even substantive edits (everything's on the table). That would come after final submission and before publication. If the ms was too much of a train wreck to be ready for that, naturally, it probably wouldn't have been accepted in the first place.

I did write for an actual publisher. I think my acquisitions editors did most of the screening, as in: if I had missed the point, or had a general style compliance fail, or done something else stupid, they'd review it and send it back for rewriting. I don't think the acq-eds did the line/copy editing, but someone did based on what I saw in print. Over that time I saw some junior editors move up to acquisitions, so I suspect they tag-teamed projects and wrangled us 'lancers.

Nowadays I think it depends on the author and publisher. Big house, endcap author? Since the market has shown that the release will make guaranteed money no matter how lousy it is (Laurell K. Hamilton, take a bow), and since endcap authors can be touchy cash cows, I don't think publishers mess with them at all. A smaller house might invest some more effort, but I don't see much reason to believe big houses do much in the way of editing. Not even sure they proofread much. In some cases, I am certain the author no longer even does the writing, but farms i

There are a number of editing modes, a thing most novice authors only learn when they start looking for "an edit" and bump up against one experienced enough to ask "What kind?" It is true that trad-pubs are putting less energy into line editing, copy editing, and proofreading. They are also capable of shocking screwups.

Some years back, I saw that Allen Barra (a very capable sportswriter) had written a book on Wyatt Earp. I figured I'd like Barra's take, so I ordered a used copy. Before I was halfway through, it was obvious someone had blown it. There were sections repeated, disjoined sections, a hot mess. I knew how to get in touch with Barra and did so, mentioning that I was planning to write a review but this did not compute. He explained the nightmare to me: someone at the publisher had mistakenly put an early draft into production. One may imagine his mortification.

Hiring one's own 'lancer doesn't necessarily solve the problem for the indie author. There are no barriers to any starving English major with gargantuan student loans from small but prestigious Duford College to hang out her shingle as an editor. I see this daily because I participate on a couple of editors' groups. A majority of the questions are about orthography, which means they anointed themselves editors without either knowing the rules or knowing how to look them up.

Proofreading isn't much better. It might or might not surprise you to learn that many who list themselves as proofers on hiring sites are simply running grammar and spell check, accepting all the changes, and accepting payment as if they did actual work. One of my clients took my advice and hired a proofreader, but got one of these. She had a number of glowing reviews (which tells you people know no better). Now, my client has a profound medievalist vocabulary--one powerful enough that I have to look up plenty of esoteric terms he uses. One of these was "gong farmer," which used to refer to the people who shoveled out the latr