References to the keynote address at the Editors Canada conference in Vancouver, June 2024.
Number of tech generation per calendar year: 7 versions per year … is what Microsoft makes it seem like.
Editor V AI — testing various AI on editing for grammar.
NYT article on AI Hype
Angwin, Julia. “Will A.I. Ever Live Up to Its Hype?” The New York Times (May 15, 2024)
Testing whether ChatGPT can actually pass the bar exam.
Chemists test whether ChatGPT actually came up with new and useful compounds.
Self-publishing
Book publishing has increased by 10x but now 2/3 of the titles on Amazon are self-published. More books are being sold than ever! (But revenue hasn’t changed in 10 years.)
According to the latest Bowker data (Publishers Weekly, February 20, 2023), 2.3 million books were self-published in the US in 2021, which was the third year in a row that more than 2 million books were self-published. This is the number of new titles that received an ISBN from Bowker. Several years ago Bowker stopped releasing the numbers of new titles that were not self-published, but a recent industry estimate is that each year “between 500,000 to 1 million . . . new titles are published through traditional publishers” (Dean Talbot, “Number of Books Published per Year,” WordsRated, February 2, 2022). So the total number of new titles being published each year in the US—combining self-published and traditionally published titles—is approximately 3 million. And here is the truly shocking figure: the annual number of new titles published each year has grown by more than ten times in the past sixteen years. According to Bowker, just 282,500 new titles (combining self-published titles and traditionally published titles) were published in the US in 2005 (Bowker Report, April 14, 2010).
Steven Piersanti, “The 10 Awful Truths about Book Publishing“
Imaginable
Imaginable by future forecaster Jane McGonigal
Computer Software that Aids Editing
PerfectIt, Editorium, EdiFix, macros, Word. But not Grammarly; it failed grammar tests abysmally.
Making Editing Pay Better
Promoting livable wages (even thriving ones) via the Instant Estimator so clients can plan the necessary budget.
Promoting Enough TIME for Editing
Project planner and time estimates
Standards for Editing
- Editors Canada (EC [CAN]) — Professional Editorial Standards
- Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP [UK]; formerly SfEP) [and AFEPI which is based entirely on it] — Editorial syllabus
- Institute of Professional Editors Limited (IPEd [AUS]) — Standards for Editorial Practice
- Editorial Freelancers Association [USA] — Chp 1 in the Code of Practice
Editing by Any Other Name
- “Quality control” as proofreading — see RGD
- “Grant writing consultant” as editorial job: https://shortishard.com/
Credentials Becoming Required
And there are more than a dozen editing certificates from accredited schools now. Plus “advanced” status from editing organizations like Ciep and Certification as well as “entry level” tests from Editors Canada.
Un-WEIRDing Editing
- Indian Copyeditors Association
- LGBTQ+ Editors Association
- Neurodivergent Editors (Facebook group)
- Editors of Color Association
- Editors Canada DEI committee
Comparing YouTube uploads and the library of Alexandria
YouTube Hours of video uploaded each minute, via Statista. (Note Vimeo, TikTok and so on add to the total number of videos uploaded to the web.)
Library of Alexandria — calculating words in the scrolls
