Dreamspinner Press

[ritaxis]

So I have a freind who is an experienced editor and caught in the Vast Swirls of Unemployment and Underemployment that afflict the young folks these days. He applies to a lot of jobs.

Dreamspinner has an ad on their website claiming that they're looking for more editors. You take a test and they hire you or don't. My friend took their test. It was a four-page piece of terrible writing. He got back an assessment that said he had missed a whole long list of in-house quirks, and they weren't going to hire him, but they would deign to employ him as an unpaid proofreader. They hire from their unpaid proofreaders, they said.

Unpaid. Proofreaders.

Did I mention that the pay for editors is terrible anyhow?

Comments

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I've given up applying to e-presses: one, they seem to want copyeditors to be fantastically meticulous to a degree that I cannot, however hard I try, deliver, and two, the pay is unanimously utterly, utterly lousy. (Maybe there are exceptions. I'd love to do more fiction editing; I'm good at fiction editing, but I also like to eat.)

I've seen a lot of small e-presses that run on 'you will get a share of the proceedings' (if there is profit. Profit can be calculated so it never exists.). The rest of them seem to be paying in the range of 0.003 cent per word edited (and no, that's not an extra zero; 'starting salaries' were lower), the lowest was $80 for an 80.000 word novel... and it's not as if you could simply give one ten hours of your time; I reckon that it would have taken me at least a full week to follow all of the instructions.

Strangely enough (or maybe not), I've found this across the board: companies that pay you reasonably well and which value your contribution are much more forgiving of mistakes, much better at communicating, and much more interested in working with you than people who want to exploit you and offer an hourly rate of a couple of dollars when all is said and done.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Ay-up. The latest crops of self-proclaimed editors can't read, write or spell, nor do they know language or grammar. They seem often to believe that words mean something other than what the words mean too.

Even worse, they think they are comical and witty, when they are merely what in ye olden daze would have been labeled as "lame."

Which is why so much fiction is so very very very very very very bad. Not to mention so very dreary, dull and, well, dumb.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

By the way, he might do well working at a legal publications press.

Love, C.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

Sounds like he is better off not working for them. But did they at least provide a list of their in-house quirks? Well, I guess they could prefer to hire people who already had those quirks. Bleah.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

They did, but their quirks are so quirky that it takes some exposure to them to understand them.

In a way, he might be better off, but currently he's averaging less than 200 dollars a month and is reluctantly using the "safety net" (food stamps, medi-cal) -- but he's an educated, skilled, and experienced person, and he should be in a full-time job by now (he's been actgively looking for work for eight months).

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

I read Paul Krugman's NYT column and blog. It is sad and infuriating that more wasn't and isn't being done to help people find jobs and to improve the economy.

Has he looked to see if Amazon Mechnical Turk might be worth pursuing? I'm fairly ignorant of the details, so perhaps that is totally off base, but it seems possible to me.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Thge Machanical Turk is a good way to earn five or ten cents an hour while being treated terribly and getting no respect, security, or benefits.

But the good news is K has a job with the Post Office now!

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't realize the terms were so bad. Good to know.

K has a job with the Post Office now!

Yay!

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Wow, bet their books have lots of uncaught typos.

[julesjones]

It is, alas, standard in the epub field to pay proof-readers in free copies. This does actually have some value for romance readers who get through vast swathes of books and can rack up a fair amount in staff discount, but it's not really of much value unless you'd be reading the books anyway.

There are also a lot of epubs that pay editors on royalties rather than flat rate. Which is fine if you happen to get one of the rare breakout books that earn serious money, but not so much if you find you're working for a house that thinks selling 50 books in the first year is a runaway success.

Having had a short story in Dreamspinner's most recent anthology, I can say that the editing was good and thorough, so they're obviously managing to get decent editors. But yes, in-house quirks.

Samhain was also looking for editors recently. (I note these when I see them because I know a couple of people who have medical issues making a 9-5 job unrealistic, and find even the paltry pay a useful supplement to their income.)

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip! Yes, I noticed trhe royalties ones. That just seems absurd.