Working hand in hand

In response to my arti­cle last Tues­day, Hertha asks, “How do you find a good edi­tor or know your edi­tor is doing a good job?”

It is not easy.

In the world of pub­lish­ing, edi­tors more often than not go through a process of appren­tice­ship, work­ing their way up from cler­i­cal posi­tions until they become edi­tors. It is a long, most­ly poor­ly paid process that has much to do with the individual’s com­mit­ment and cir­cum­stances. It is very hard and demand­ing. Many do not make the grade, or can­not afford to hold on. Then, those that do become edi­tors are sub­ject to reg­u­lar reviews and achieve­ment eval­u­a­tions. Among the achieve­ment mark­ers is the mon­ey made for the pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny. Any­one asso­ci­at­ed with pub­lish­ing knows of very fine edi­tors who have been dumped for sad rea­sons, if there are rea­sons, oth­er than per­son­al­i­ties and cor­po­rate demands. Sim­i­lar­ly, one learns of edi­tors who make you scratch your head and ask, “How can they still be editors?”

How do you find a good edi­tor? Talk­ing to writ­ers who have long-stand­ing edi­tors. Hav­ing a good agent. Going to con­fer­ences and lis­ten­ing to edi­tors talk. 

Ulti­mate­ly, it is all about rela­tion­ships, close and trust­ing ones. What works for you does not always work for me. When things go bad, it can be very bad. When they are good, good books happen.

The key point to remem­ber is that pro­fes­sion­al writ­ing is a col­lab­o­ra­tive process. It is not the edi­tor help­ing you. It is you and your edi­tor work­ing hand in hand to cre­ate that good book.