Beyond Selidor

I don't know anybody at Hodder, but it's an imprint of Hachette, and while Hachette is huge, imprints are typically accounted separately (sometimes imprints within imprints also are). so one imprint at Hachette might be doing amazingly and generating a lot of profit and another imprint might be middling, etc. so I don't have the scoop on H&S specifically, but finances/resources do play into it.

speaking generally, the industry has had a problem for a long time with poor salaries and overworked employees. within editorial there's a huge turnover of assistants who burn out after a year, maybe two, in the role and then leave the industry altogether unless they manage to get promoted (rare) or find a step-up job at a different publisher, where they still do most of the same work as they did before but on a slightly better salary. there has also been a shift towards putting the copy-editing and proofreading bits of work onto the assistants, who are - as you might guess - new to the industry and untrained, and by the time they have the experience to do a better job, they're burnt out and have left, and the cycle starts anew with a new assistant. the larger edits (e.g. structural) are often also passed down further in the 'food chain' to less experienced editors. picture an experienced commissioning editor who's been in the industry 12+ years - they commission the book from the author, but then delegate the bulk of the editorial work with the text to an assistant editor or junior editor who's been in the industry 3-5 years, and the copy/proof edits to the editorial assistant. those juniors, depending on publisher and imprint and how the work is structured, will often do very little of their own commissioning, but what they commission they don't get to pass down - they have to do those edits themselves so they are editing more books than they are commissioning. by the time they are in a position to be able to delegate the work they are, ironically, also the best person to actually do the edits as by this point they have (or should have) the experience to do it!

and that's not even getting into how some editors just aren't good editors, editing experience or no. having a good commercial sense and being able to commission the right books to commercial success is not the same as being a good editor.

the US and UK publishing industries are different in some ways and it's my impression that cuts, salaries, career progression, etc. are worse in the US than here. (it would be interesting to check whether the poor editing you're seeing is in US-originated books or UK books, or whether it's the same for both.) just to name one anecdotal example within my own company: I've been there 3 years this march, and have been promoted once, from assistant to coordinator. the assistant in the equivalent team in the US office, has been an assistant for 6 years now. in the time she has been an assistant, my team has had 5 assistants, who all got promoted or left for second step roles elsewhere (and in one notable exception, left the job because they got arrested for Crimes).