[gumby]

> However, there's a lot of forensic evidence suggesting that they farmed the edit out to more than one person (which would explain the inconsistent apparent level of skill and care).

I'm sorry about your experience.

But you might be interested in knowing that that phenomenon goes way back -- a lot of the "old masters" paintings were done by apprentice artists working under some level of supervision from the "named" painters. And I'm talking about really famous painters like Rembrandt or Reubens.

Also quite a few of the most prolific contemporary mass market authors have "assistants.

[bombcar]

It's also literally the modus operandi of every consulting firm ever; bring in the A team to sell and seal the deal, and then farm it off to the lowest possible team they can find.

[listenallyall]

Moreso for enterprise software. Often the "farming off" is to developers in another, poorer, country.

[f17]

> Also quite a few of the most prolific contemporary mass market authors have "assistants".

I told my new editor what I paid to hire the big-name editor and she said, "You could've gotten a book [as in a ghostwriter] for that."

And yeah, I'm well aware of the authors who farm out their names. If you're writing formulaic commercial work, why not? I don't begrudge their existing; I just wish they didn't take up so much marketing and publicity oxygen (but, on the other hand, if the commercial hacks weren't using that up, it'd go to overconnected MFA "literary" hacks, so... no worse for it?)