Do publishers really have fact-checkers? My understanding was that support for authors is now relatively minimal, even for established authors, and no one really has the time or resources to second-guess everything an author has claimed. I take as a key example Naomi Wolf learning after her book was "done" that a significant chunk of it was based on a misunderstanding of an admittedly confusing 19th century British legal phrase.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/naomi-wolfs-book-cor...
replyI think maybe the idea that a single author spending months or years on their research, which the publish as a single bound and polished work is misguided -- an academic trying to do similar work in multiple articles would have gotten review from peers on each article, and hopefully have not spent so much time working under a correctable misunderstanding.
Fact checking as a separate job is more for journalism than books. But editors have fact checking as part of their jobs. (It is not copy-editing, which is a different job.)
replyMany nonfiction authors will hire a fact checker separately. They don't want to look like they missed something. Errors still happen, of course.