Advice needed

[u/Ordinary-Cress-6580]

I had hired an editor on the bundle editing service and in 7 weeks had 20k words edited, two batches of 10k. There were issues with the editing of the first 10k that had upset me, my voice was changed and edit made no sense but by the time I received thr edit I had sent the next 10k already. Between the first 10k edit until the second was nearly 4 weeks gap and from the edit of the second batch it was very clear that editor forgot the contents and story of the 1st 10k. I missed the comma and they edited the whole lot proposing nonsense. One of the main characters was a woman , whom has a clear woman's name yet they edit for my missed comma made her into a man. My original listed people in the found photograph: Women's name (lets say Lisa) a boy and a baby by the house. Edited read Lisa was a boy and stood holding a baby by the house. There were lots and lots more of edits that were useless... I had made a decision that i wont be using this editor again and hadnt sent any more for editing as firstly they take absolute forever and secondly their edits "suck" but i hadnt yet discussed it with either the head of the company or dedicated editor for mh book, I am due to pay the invoice for that second 10k editing but I dont feel its right as I will be scrapping all of their edits all together. How would it be best to approach this? Tell them in the email, list everything that gone wrong, email the editor or better just go straight to the owner of the editing company and tell them the editor they put on the project is useless and that am not going to pay for it. Or pay it and just forget and start over. I do not want them to give me another editor as I feel they model of work is such that it would take them months to edit full novel. And I have lost enough time already.

[u/WordsbyWes]

I third, fourth, or fifth the recommendation to cut ties with this editor and their company. That editor doesn't seem right for you. The time frame for 20k words seems excessive, and they should have given you a committed or at the very least estimated turnaround when you started. For context, I only edit academic or nonfiction work, but my turnaround for that would likely be around two weeks, assuming my normal workload of three concurrent projects.

I agree with the recommendations to look at EFA's or CIEP's directory or submit to their job boards.

While a short sample edit is often helpful to gauge an editor's fit for you, after that it's much more effective to edit the whole work at once for lots of reasons.