Cheapskate publishers

Someone from the publishing company was on the phone to me today. Apparently the boss thinks my estimate for proof-reading 200 A4 pages - 600 lira or about $400 - was way too high. This didn't surprise me. It was based on my normal rate of 3 lira per page, which is designed for shorter works, and I was already prepared to go down to 500 lira (which was what they paid me once for a weekend's work in the recording studio, so it's not like it's going to break the bank, even for a tiny publishing house like this). What did surprise me was finding out they only paid the author 300 lira! Yes, that's $200 for writing a whole book, with no royalties and all rights transferred to the publisher. At those rates, a professional writer would have to churn out five books a month simply to make ends meet.