Every time in-house editors are fired or retired, more qualified book doctors enter the fray. Many of them have formed loose alliances where they pool their marketing resources and avoid head-on competition with one another. How do you feel about this?
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I've run a solo assessment, editing and mentoring business (hate that US term 'book doctor') since 2005 and was involved with a few assessment services freelance before that. You are right, Jeff, the competition has grown exponentially as traditional publishing slowly collapses. Despite this, I took on a half-time associate in 2010 because the work kept mounting up. Oz and the UK appear to have been ahead of the US in proliferation and acceptance of assessment services. With the flood of writers moving into self-publishing and the growing difficulty of getting a work accepted by diminishing trade publishers, that associate is approaching full-time now as writers seek to find ways to learn to better their craft.
Yes, more service pools are appearing, mostly in the US and India, but they can rarely match the transparency, accountability and personal communication necessary to teach the craft of writing or offer writers the substantive editing advice (not just proofing!) that writers now need to make it in the trade publishing or self publishing world. The pools do some aggressive advertising and many writers will get burned (as they did - and still do - when vanity publishing first appeared). These pools are not avoiding 'head-on competition', they are creating it, but there seems to be more than enough work for Flood Manuscripts in Oz. Our higher cost of living (double to five times the US in some markets) is a bigger worry, and I wonder if more Oz writers will look o/s for the cheaper offers from US (or Indian) editors and pools. For the moment we are still growing and continue to rely on quality service to keep that trend happening.
I have yet to meet an author or read an unpublished MS that did not need editing by someone other than author.
As for the pushed out editors forming alliances, et al, I'm all in favor of it. They have a right to make a living and they have right to organize themselves in such fashion as they see fit.
At the same time, I am adamantly opposed to unions.
Most people will see a dichotomy there. But then everyone else on the planet ain't me.
I'm just me too, but I agree with your assessment.