Speaking as an occasional author, by the time I've finished the however-many drafts and several rounds of edits, I'm completely blind to the manuscript's mechanical flaws, and need someone else to point out to me the Spoonerisms, unfortunately euphemistic word choices, or even just that I've dedicated my book to "My parents, Ayn Rand and God."
Also, I say again: copyeditors and proofreaders are cheap. Doing that work myself makes about as much sense as doing anything else I could outsource cheaply.
But i think the point is that you have to outsource it. There is no space for you "outsourcing the outsourcing" to publishers, because there is not enough fat in the market for them to survive anymore (or so they say). Authors will increasingly have to take charge of managing their creations, like it happened with musicians.
I used to think so, but in industries where supply is abundant, publishers provide not only "post-production", but distribution and more importantly marketing and branding - social proof. The biggest benefit may be setting oneself apart from the fray.
If publishers die, such social proof will simply come from other venues, be it dedicated marketing outfits or some sort of community (goodreads etc). In music, major labels are increasingly irrelevant.
And then successful dedicated marketing outfits starts vertically integrate to beat out competition, offering editorial services, distribution, etc.... becoming a publisher.
What will happen is that some publishers fail to adapt to a digital economy and are replaced by upcomers who are perfectly adjusted to it. Publishing companies will not disappear because they fill a function in the industry.
A "publisher" in the digital world will be a very different beast and it will be hard to call it such. Most of it will likely be automated. Their core-competency might not even be book-publishing.
Are Amazon and Netflix "studios"? No, but they do produce high-quality video content. Is Louis CK a "studio"? No, but he's producing a TV series.
Publishers' functions (content editing, packaging, distribution, marketing and merchandising) are being split and reorganized in different ways. Verticals built on the new production chain will look very different from current publishers.
Managing production and outsourcing is its own skillset. Division of labour between a specialist "producer" and the person who does the actual writing ought to make sense in terms of efficiency.
Yes, but nowhere is set in stone that such skillset cannot be automated (and hence more efficient, in aggregate). Webapps will appear that will manage such production, once demand emerges, not unlike they appeared in the music business.
That's the proper way to write it. If you want the other meaning, it's "My parents - Ayn Rand and God". You English people really should learn proper punctuation - most of the world has been using these things called dashes, colons, etc. for quite a while now. They help immensely to disambiguate.
What kevinr says. At some point, you start reading what you expect to read rather than what is actually on the page--including typos with red lines under them. You basically cannot publish something significant without having another set of eyes on it at a minimum. A decent copy editor will also help fix up some things (in my case excessive wordiness). Tools like spellcheck help but only to a degree. Also as kevinr says, basic copyediting is pretty cheap. I paid about $400 for my last book.
Also, I say again: copyeditors and proofreaders are cheap. Doing that work myself makes about as much sense as doing anything else I could outsource cheaply.