Bad Editors: Employer Red Flags to Watch Out For When Seeking Copyediting Work

J. Jonah Jameson, the editor everyone loves to hate, in Marvel Knights Spider-Man

The internet is teeming with people and companies marketing ultra-competitive editing and proofreading services. For the UK market alone, there's Dissertation Britain, British Proofreading, London Proofreaders, Oxbridge Editing, Cambridge Editing... and ever on. Quantity doesn't denote quality, however (Oxbridge 'connection' or no), and such a competitive landscape inevitably breeds unscrupulous individuals who run their businesses like the editing equivalent of a sausage factory. I should know – I worked for one early in my editing career, after all (my ex-employer would probably even agree with this assessment; he 'hilariously' referred to the company as a 'sausage factory' on more than one occasion).

While their services might be comparatively cheap, you wouldn't want to pay for a manuscript with the editorial integrity of reconstituted mystery meat (this could actually work out more expensive if you then have to pay someone else to go over it again) – so it goes without saying that you probably shouldn't work for such a company if you can help it, either. When speed and volume are prioritised above all else, it's not just the quality of the edit that suffers – it's the editors, too.

However, even the most discerning of applicants can find themselves in such positions, especially at the start of their career, as Helen Hughes, associate professor at Leeds Business School explains: 'Graduates can find themselves vulnerable to exploitation where they haven't acquired the experience to know what's OK and what's not'. This issue is compounded by a lack of choices due to a flooded market and pressure to establish oneself and 'pay one's dues'.

But in an industry where high volumes of work and relatively low pay are standardised, how can you tell what's acceptable and what's not? When does challenging cross over into exploitative? Or is an element of exploitation simply baked into industry practices – or the working world as a whole? The following are some of the most glaring red flags I've encountered – both as a jobseeker and former card-carrying 'sausage factory' worker.

High volumes of work in unreasonably narrow time frames

1,000,000 words by tomorrow? Sure thing. You want fries with that?

Many publishing houses, especially independent ones, operate on narrow profit margins. Couple this with the endless – and cheapened – proliferation of content in the digital age and the public's increased appetite for fresh media, and it's unsurprising that high workloads with fast turnarounds are something of a feature of the digital media landscape. In fact, I've seen 'fast-paced environment' emphasised on so many job listings that it's basically become a badge of honour. 

While this might be common, I don't think that makes this a positive or healthy expectation. It's an unfortunate byproduct of an undervalued industry as well as a toxic, work-centred culture. This culture can lead to employees being habitually pressurised to work overtime (paid or not) or even edit sloppily simply to inflate their workload ('You need to be making more errors,' as my former editorial supervisor/factory foreman once told me). 

Nevertheless, there's a spectrum of reasonability, and if there's a significant fixation on word count targets or pay is defined by this figure rather than the time you've spent on a job, the employer in question might just be part of the problem.

Look out, too, for misleading job listings that hide behind attractive-sounding fixed hourly rates that are actually based on an assumed (and typically unrealistically high) volume of output, making the pay much more variable and, predictably, lower. Agreed-on freelance rates based on word counts where the quality of the text has been assured (e.g., it has already been copyedited) are fairer, however.

Services like 'VIP' edits can compound this systemic issue; instead of allotting an appropriate amount of time to each job based on its length and complexity, clients can simply pay more for their work to be turned around faster (though not necessarily to a higher standard). In practice, these more lucrative jobs were never turned down at the company I worked at, regardless of how busy we were, and editors were simply expected to meet the demands of this increased load by whatever means possible.

Rather than expecting concessions on the part of the editor in terms of their time and standards, therefore, a good editing company shouldn't be afraid to occasionally hold off on – or even turn down – work when it exceeds their capacity.

Overly competitive pricing

Where to begin with how much is wrong about this? (This won't all go to the editor, either.)

Editing is an involved and complex process, with innumerable considerations besides spelling and grammar, including sentence and text structure, formatting, length, house style, tone, logic, legal issues, contents pages, indexes and references. There's a reason why companies still need to contract human editors and don't simply rely on AI or tools such as spell check or Grammarly (check the CIEP's suggested minimum rates for freelance proofreading/editing here. Spoiler: it works out to a bit more than £6.99 per 1,000 words).

Ultra-low pricing is, therefore, a cardinal red flag – and the underlying cause of many of the issues mentioned here. While low, low prices can attract more clients, this also entails a lower calibre of work – and higher demands of editors, who are pushed to edit faster and with less care just to turn a profit. (Clients aren't necessarily more understanding if something escapes your notice, either.) The cost of low prices is, of course, almost always passed on to employees rather than employers.

However, many 'content mill' editing companies side-step this issue by focusing their recruitment efforts on the student and recent graduate labour market as salary and job quality expectations will be lower. Employee turnover will undoubtedly be high, but companies can exploit a constantly replenishable labour supply in the form of bright-eyed (if only briefly) graduates who may feel less able to advocate for themselves due to their lack of experience. 

These companies can also get away with sloppy standards as they often rely on a source of work that promises abundant demand but limited scrutiny: the international market, especially students applying or submitting work to English-speaking universities. While many such study abroad students have cash to burn, as they're generally non-native English speakers, they won't always be able to call out finer linguistic issues with an edit.

Such jobs will rope you in with how accessible they seem (e.g., they might be remote, available to recent graduates or directly connected to your degree) but are unlikely to have any real growth potential – their entire model is based on low prices and rates of pay but ultra-high volume, after all. Even if you do decide to take up such a role, therefore, whether for experience or money, don't stay any longer than necessary. You can do better, but the company never will so long as they keep turning a profit. 

Unrealistic claims about breadth of company qualifications and expertise

Editors experienced in every possible field but no specifics to back it up. Sounds legit.  

Despite charging clients such competitive rates, predatory editing companies will sell themselves on how educated and expert their editors are, with specialists in every discipline available 24/7. Much like a restaurant, however, the broader the menu, the lower the food quality is likely to be. When a company seems able to offer anything to anyone at any time, they're likely more focused on maximising profits than providing an expert editing service. 

The business might be much smaller than indicated, and the behind-the-scenes reality is each editor having to step into a diverse array of roles depending on the availability of work or editors, with shapeshifting identities to match. Of course, you might not need expert-level knowledge of a field to be able to provide a competent editing service, but when the company is cultivating that expectation in clients, this can put undue pressure on editors. 

Alternatively, the company might have a worryingly bloated supply of editors on their books to ensure round-the-clock coverage. It's a demoralising feeling to be congratulated on securing a 'job' after completing editing tests and providing evidence of your further qualifications only to find you have to 'bid' for jobs... almost like any other freelancer. They won't have any qualms about swelling their ranks with more editors, either, as they'll only pay for each completed job rather than an hourly wage. This also insures them as the variable availability of work will result in high turnover.

Morale? Never heard of her.

No standards on work accepted (entailing duties beyond your job description)

Yeah, this... isn't proofreading.

It might seem counterintuitive, but a manuscript should meet certain quality standards before editing. Proofreading, meanwhile, is appropriate only for writing of very high quality or after copyediting has already taken place. This is because while the editor can correct, clarify and crystallise the voice of a writer, this shouldn't be confused with the writing process itself. An editor can't be expected to imbue writing with value it didn't already have, like some linguistic conjurer. Any expectations of this sort edge dangerously close to ghostwriting (or 'paraphrasing', as some companies like to term it) – an entirely different discipline. 

This is why work focused on non-professional sources, such as students, and unrestricted non-native English markets is risky territory. When there are no checks on the quality of work coming in, there are no limits to the expectations that can be placed on editors. Nonetheless, editors will be expected to produce work according to deadlines defined by word counts, not work quality. 

Some editing services actively market themselves on their ability to increase the client's chances of obtaining a higher grade, winning admission to a chosen school or being published by an academic journal or publication. Not only is this morally ambiguous, straddling the grey area between editing and plagiarism, it's laborious, too – of all the checks an editor must make, trying to make sense of the damn text in the first place shouldn't be among them.

Buy a proofread, get boosted grades and English proficiency for free. Bargain.

In my previous role, which relied heavily on non-native markets, obvious Google Translate jobs (texts automatically 'translated' via Google, either in whole or part – especially unreliable when translating between, say, Korean and English) would occasionally filter through. While dealing with these wasn't part of our official duties, they were tricky to weed out when the work was of such variable quality, and in practice we'd be expected to get on with them as long as they weren't ridiculously lengthy. No one wins in this scenario – not the put-upon editor and certainly not the client, whose work might be made passable in the same way that 'Monkey Christ' fresco restored by a well-meaning elderly lady in Spain was.

Nor should an editor have to lose sleep over whether a client's edited paper will allow them to pass English Literature 101 at the end of the semester. This can cast the editor in more of a 'teacher' role relative to the client, entailing additional labour in the form of in-depth explanations of changes and drawn-out exchanges based on miscommunications and unrealistic expectations. It's a slippery slope from 'helping' in this way to other teaching duties, too – to the point that I've even been expected to grade the English writing of clients before.

If the client isn't used to dealing with professional editors or has a shaky grasp of English, they might instead equate a 'good' edit with other markers, such as more 'red' on the page. An edit can't be very good, I've seen some clients reason, if their writing hasn't been radically transformed. They might not know what those changes should be, but they're confident there should be much more of them.

As well as a lack of confidence in their writing, this attitude is fuelled by the company overselling their services. Be wary, therefore, of editing companies that invite work from non-professional corners and promise exaggerated results. Editing is the business of polishing texts, not turds.    

Lack of acknowledgement of personal achievements

A generous offer to forgo credit by the company. Credit the editor? Who's that now? 

Finally, while this might be difficult to determine when applying, an early sign of an unrewarding work environment might be the encouraged use of alternate editor names. This is concerning on a few fronts – it allows the company to inflate the apparent size of their workforce through the use of endless personas and skirt around the question of accountability. If an editor gains a reputation for poor quality, exacerbated by a culture of excessive work volumes in protracted timescales, they can simply shed their identity and adopt a new one.

The other, more insidious implication of this system, however, is that editors are never truly credited for their work. An author happy with my edit of their book once asked if they could thank me in their dedication. The use of a fake name, however, barred me from this possibility; my employer defended this by stating he didn't want to advertise individual editors – only the company (despite him demanding personal credit on a larger, more impressive project soon after). 

The fact that the book in question was a cringey tween-penned fantasy about anthropomorphic wolf wars I didn't really want to be associated with anyway was beside the point. Taking an employee's name from them is one of the most dystopian things I've ever encountered. Words matter. Listen to the language an employer uses. When mine 'joked' that we were part of a sausage factory, this revealed his true view of us as employees, too. Cheap, disposable and of little more distinction than the homogenous products we were manufacturing.

Not only do you want to be in the kind of place where you'd be proud to put your name to your work, but, crucially, you want to cling onto some semblance of your own identity. Employers might demand much from their employees, but if one is willing to take something as fundamental as your very name from you at the outset, you have to wonder what else they wouldn't hesitate to take from you.

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