How Much Editing?

How Much Editing?

I've been going over some of our previous conversations about editing,
and just realized that we don't have any estimation for the following:


1.

What percentage of words gets changed during the editing process?

This could be for books, articles, essays, journal reports, etc.

Individual reports or averages are both welcome.


2.

What percentage of works actually need professional editing?

I am beginning to wonder if those who were saying that editing is some
kind of absolutely necessary process to have done professionally meant
something more like necessary in 99% of case, 95% of cases, 90%, etc.

*

I should make my own point of view clear:

My own objection to the traditional publishing procedures is monopoly:
meaning that virtually 100% of the published materials anyone read for
all previous history had to pass thru tests of worthiness, censorship,
profitability, readability, etc., of the publishing professions from a
pre-historic set of scribes, to the historic monopolies of Stationers,
through to the listings of Books In Print and Ingram, etc.

However, the written works that changed the world did not go through a
publisher's hands:


1.

Martin Luther's 95 Theses:  toppled the Catholic monopoly.

[I wonder how many Protestants realize that name Protestant comes from
a letter of protest to the Roman Catholics, signed by Lutheran princes
along with "the leaders of 14 free cities."]  [Encarta]


2.

Isaac Newton's fundamental physics discoveries:  toppled the physics a
whole world had known.

[Written at home, while Cambridge was shut down due to a plague.]


3.

Albert Einstein's great papers on Relativity, the nature of space-time
and, of course E=mc2.

[All the original works were written after he was tossed out of school
and was working in the Swiss Patent Office.  Eventually the school did
figure out how important these works were, and gave him a degree based
on these papers]



4.

The Ancient Greek and Roman classics, or Shakespeare, Dante, Donne and
Chaucer, etc., etc., etc.

[Have we had anyone like them since the publishing industry took over]


My point on the relationship of the world of eBooks to the world of an
established publishing industry is that the author CAN communicate via
DIRECT communication with the world at large, without any intermediary
whatsoever, NOT that the authors MUST communicate without intermediary
middlemen as provided in the traditional publishing business plan.

This my exception is with those who say that editors or publishers and
all that comes with them is a REQUIREMENT for anything worth reading.

I would like to think there is room for other options in the hearts or
minds of the editing and publishing world.

The funny thing about this conversation is that much of it has pursued
comments from the independent ["indie"] publishers, who occupy a place
that appears between the traditional publishing empires and the eBooks
that provide a possible means for authors' more direct contact with an
audience that might not be provided by traditional publishers.

The traditional publishers seem to regard the independant publisher in
much the same way the independent publisher regards eBook authors, who
are bypassing the independent publishers in much the same way as those
independent publishers are bypassing the traditional large publishers.