No; it's the author's job to make his work as good as he possibly, possibly can--to polish and polish and polish. Then the editor takes it and makes it even better. The plan isn't to waste the editor's time with basic (or even advanced) writing tasks that the author should have mastered.
...no, it's not!... it's the writer's job to submit a ms that has no more than the occasional typo or minor grammar goof that can be caught by the editor the publisher assigns to the book... if your ms is full of major grammar goofs and other mistakes a good writer would have caught, it will not be accepted for publication... ...how can you know that?... and unless you are making your book available to be read for free, it's sales that count, not 'reads'... ...because new writers are fair game and most of them need anything from a good editor up to a ghostwriter to fix their poorly written stuff... and because everyone and his/her cousin seems to think they can just call themselves editors and make money off those easy marks, while there are actually far fewer professional editors among those masses who are really good at it... ...sorry, but successful authors DO deliver mss that need little editing... and their publishers provide them with an editor who checks their mss for them and corrects them... ...but new writers have little to no chance of their work being published no matter how well it's edited, and even if they do snag a publisher, aren't likely to make as much from it as the editing cost, so it's money down the drain...
Well, it is as you say. I had a talk with one publisher last year. And I told him. "Keep all the money, do whatever you want with it" but he just didn't stop yacking about there is too many illustrations and the grammary isn't perfect, so he would need to raise budget on this or that. I'm not suprised, because most of his money makes always top 10 books and all the rest of the authors share just food money. Maybe is pointless to try so hard to be published and just start to promote yourself first. Put two rats in the maze and tell to one, it will make it to the cheese faster by watching carefully its every step and to the other one just say "run". Which one of them will get the cheese? Well is sad for publishers that the internet came in and once all of us get e-ink readers and there will be lots of new authors publishing for free, nobody will buy anything. I suppose that something has to change or that will just happen
They have to work at it diligently until they are no longer new writers. They don't get there by relying on paid editors.
So how long does one have to write before passing the "new writer" stage? Or how much do they have to write? Do they have to show their work, prove they've written for X number of years or written Y number of words, so publishers will realize they aren't 'new writers' any more and it's safe to take a chance on them? Come on...
When their writing no longer makes it obvious they are new at it. When their query letters look professional, and when a manuscript is requested, it too looks professional and begins well. First impressions, followed by confirmation that those first impressions weren't a fluke. Ain't no shortcuts. Like blowin' the blues, ya gots ta pay your dues.
So it's only a matter of being able to disguise it? I acknowledge that the more one writes, the better one should get. At the same time, writers who are relatively new will get contracts while writers who have been at it for years will not. This is because writers are individuals with individual talents and skills, and publishing is a lot more than "good writing".
You have to have the self-esteem and some way of self presentation which survives even at intelectual world, so the company won't look bad
