What’s India Got to do with It?

Most typesetting of regular old American-English books is now done overseas in India, where there are no particularly fair labor laws, by people who speak English as a second language and who will work for $10 a day. In fact, in an effort to streamline production and make it ever cheaper, more and more publishers and publishing vendors are moving copyediting and proofreading overseas as well, leaving native English-speakers hanging out on this side of the Atlantic, doomed to a life of Quality Control (QC) inspections and the occasional final review.

Thank god that my Very Corporate company has not worked all of the bugs out of this system just yet. For the time being, I am still an editor and my future as a QC inspector is just a teenie dot on the horizon.

Definitions

Publisher: A company who reads your book, buys your book, and markets your book.

Publishing vendor: A company hired by a publisher to do the dirty work of copy editing, typesetting, styling, proofreading, and in general to make your book look like a book.

Publishing company: Loose term for companies that works in publishing; is sometimes applied to publishing vendors but more commonly used in reference to publishers.