![Do It Right. (Tacoma Narrows Bridge, by RustyObjects {Own work} [CC BY-SA 3.0 {http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0}], via Wikimedia Commons)](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge%2C_by_train.jpg)
We all have images in our heads of what they are. What they do.
But are our images correct?
Marjorie Braman’s article, “What Ever Happened to Book Editors” got me to remembering the first time I’d ever heard about the real working lives of publishing editors. It was at a writer’s conference. From the very editors themselves. What I’d heard sounded more like my own work life (minus the specific book stuff)…meetings, meetings, and more meetings. Budgets. Schedules. Reading queries. Writing flap copy—oh, and trips.
I didn’t hear a whole lotta editing going on in those offices.
Now, they did tell us that any editing they did they had to do on their own time…at home. After looong days at work. So, they had that going for their job descriptions.
But what Marjorie’s article brings out is that publishers believe it’s all about acquiring and selling. She was flat-out told by her publisher at the time—as she says, “almost in passing”—that “We don’t pay you to edit.” She says that one little quip meant to her (and rightly so, as I’ve gathered over the years I’ve experienced being in the publishing world) was that editing is no longer important. It’s all about buying and selling. She says this has been true since she came into the business in 1985.
This date, I found curious.
You see, I started getting serious about writing around that time (May of 1987). I still have my original log books—see, I even started treating it as a profession back then…doing it every day, studying it, going to critiques groups, keeping track of all my work.
But, man, talk about being a day late and a dollar short in an industry where editors were editors and authors were cultivated!
On the flip side to Marjorie’s article is that she became a freelance editor and left trad publishing, so all of the above no longer applied to her. Now…she’s full-bore into helping authors write the best books possible.
But what she’d described above is what I’m seeing everywhere: the constant focus on the bottom line to every business. It’s all gone to bean counting. Bean counters are even making heady corporation direction decisions, all based upon what’s making money and what’s not. That’s not a good perspective. A good perspective would be the overall picture/health of a company and what needs to be reworked…sometime a “minor” correction in one department can generate huge, positive outcomes (yes, even positive revenue generation) elsewhere. It’s not just a “this makes money and this doesn’t.” What is working and what isn’t…how can we improve processes…more intelligently schedule…make better use of existing capabilities…make a better product/give a better service…and the rest will follow?
How can we publish better books?
Better cultivate authors?
Not just sell crap cause crap sells?
If all you have is crap (or “the same old thing”) available…that’s all anyone can buy. If you don’t challenge people, they do not grow.
A fair cost-benefit analysis (again, I find this different and more in-depth and useful than a mere “this makes money…this doesn’t…” indignance).
Just how much of a profit is really needed for an industry to survive?
Hire the people you need…staff the actual positions with qualified individuals…cultivate better authors…and let editors do what editors are supposed to be doing. I know all this “costs.” So do books. And there are other options out there for readers…for writers.
My dad always used to say, if you’re gonna do something…do it right, for God’s sake.
Great stuff, Frank. You (and Marjorie) have touched a nerve about book editing (and a chord with that photo—the Tacoma Narrows Bridge is only a couple of miles from my house). I’ve seen lots of terrible editing jobs lately, and it’s not just in books. Some of the (non) editing I’ve seen in literary journals has been abysmal—one story featured a character named Josie, whose name was changed to Jose on the first page of the story.
I recently met a book editor at a teaching gig. When I mentioned my latest manuscript, which I had just finished after 2 years, he said he was interested in seeing it. The guy had 20 years in the biz, so I gave him a look. His advice? If I wanted it to sell, I should change my male protagonist to a woman. That’s the kind of sales über alles attitude that’s helped destroy the industry, the kind of pandering to the tastes of the marketplace that’s killing our art. I can’t print my response to him here.
You raise some great issues. Sales and marketing are necessary to the survival of the writing biz, but how far do we go before it fails to be legitimate writing anymore? Every writer and editor must decide where to draw that line.
Hey, Joe!
Yes, I’ve so much similar to what you’ve said and it bugs the snot out of me, too. My usual internal (unvoiced) response to such statements is if that’s what you want, then write your own damned book! If an editor’s job is to make my book better, than make MY BOOK BETTER, not YOUR BOOK MINE. Fact of the matter is…ANYTHING can be sold. ANYTHING. So, put a little effort into an author’s work…as long as that work is ready for publication (polished, etc., you know the drill).
But what’s happening in the publishing is far from unique. It’s happening in all business, maybe the larger ones first/more. Quality is dropping while profits are rising, which I find utterly counterintuitive! It may “work” in the short term, but if my faith in people holds true, eventually we will see the fallacy and go elsewhere. New initiatives will arise and take over the failed incumbents. That is my hope.
Regarding the publishing world…maybe that is exactly what we are experiencing with all the poor editing going on! Perhaps all the smart editors are fleeing and their backfills are the inexperienced boys and girls…or those who are flat-out lying, thinking, gee ANYONE can edit a book (I hear lying on resumes has become quite the “thing” these days).
This is a great post, Frank. You’re so right. Man alive, the world is in desperate need of MORE editors! Editing should be right near the top of the list of what’s needed in the book world (and everywhere else too, tbh) and instead it sounds like it’s becoming obsolete. This is truly a sad state of affairs.
I think Marjorie Braman’s experience it going to become more and more the norm. Smart people can only put up with so much before they feel like they’re going to compromise their deepest principles. I know money seems to drive the world…and pay apartment rents and such…but I truly hope that editors begin the mass exodus out…and back to that place that will allow them to do what they wanted to do in the first place, when they first entered this business!
I mean, even Stephen King threatened to leave a publisher because they weren’t editing his work (okay, this is interesting: I read an article a couple years ago about how Mr. King said he would leave a publisher/pull his mss if editors did NOT edit his work…now cannot find that article….)!
Much of it is left to us professional freelance editors. Considering how poorly some of the traditional books look now, just as NYTimes – practically not edited – it may behoove even those traditionally publishing authors to get recommendations for good freelance editing. Editing is important. Stumbling over everything from confusing plot points to multiple misspellings can turn a reader off. We want them back for the next book. It is all about the big sale. Maybe they believe readers are less picky now. Perhaps we should start writing in test speak. U can try if you like. There’s even a book out there that tells the classics in Tweets. For fun I bought copies for my sisters of the quill… avid readers, I doubt they actually read them. 🙂 http://www.amazon.com/Twitterature-Worlds-Greatest-Twenty-Tweets/dp/0143117327
Hey, Inky, yes, it’s more than just grammar…as long as it doesn’t turn into what Joe, above, talks about.
“Test speak”? Oh, maybe you mean TEXT speak. I have heard of the “Tweet book.”
As to your statement about reader are less picky “now”…I have to wonder…I don’t know if readers were ever “more picky” in the recent past. Were they? Were they ever? I think they just bought and read whatever they liked. I think in today’s world with all the author blogs and tweets and all out there, the everyday person is more aware…but I don’t know if all readers really care that much about a misspelling or two—but I’ll qualify that statement with this: I think some…maybe what I’ll call the more “professional.readers,” like those on goodreads, or those who know authors, etc., will take umbrage, but I don’t think the majority of readers really care…and I cite one global best seller I won’t title (I don’t like to call out specific titles or authors, sorry) as a prime example. But we’ve all heard of it; even read it. It was poorly written and poorly, poorly edited. and frigging SOLD. Movie deal. I just think a book has to somehow grab readers on SOME level, anywhere from the prose itself to the concept. I mean, really, if people are flocking in drove to mindless movies and buying uninspired writing, what leg can you stand on to say readers really care is there’s a flaccid plot or a misspelled word or three in a book? All we can do is do the best we can do. It’s who we are.
Interesting post, Frank. I know you’re addressing only book publishing here, but whatever the reason, yes, the art of editing (and it truly IS an art, knowing how to do enough without doing too much) has been declining for a while now.
A big part of it, I’m sure, is the sped-up pace of our Internet-driven, ADD-minded culture, but I see a disturbing number of typos on a daily basis, for one thing. Worse, I see pieces that have been given, as my boss would say, “a lick and a promise” — no real improvements, just a glorified proofreading job. That’s not editing.
I’m not suggesting that an editor has to rewrite everything (a piece that bad should be sent back with a detailed critique, frankly, which I’ve done on more than one occasion). But we need to make sure the article, or book, or post, or whatever it is, hangs together from start to finish. And if it doesn’t, we need to fix it — even if at the risk of displeasing the writer (the horror!).
It’s often a matter of finding the right fit — someone, as a colleague of mine once said, who will allow you to be yourself while protecting you from yourself. As the creator, we can’t be objective about our own work. We already know what we want to convey. A good editor will let us know if we’ve succeeded — and we need to have the courage to accept when we haven’t.
After all, as you just said, if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. A good editor will help us do that.
Agreed. In trad publishing, yup. However an issue about bringing in editors on mss for the indie folk like myself…is cost. It’s far more expensive than cover art. Or, after you’ve dealt with cover art, conversion, etc., having to then add to that the cost of editors…well, pricey. Sure, some can do it for similar cover-art costs, but what I’ve heard and seen for the most part goes into a couple thousand. So, right there, is (I feel) the main reason indie authors do not bring in freelance editors, once you factor out those who do rush jobs. I’d once heard the haughty jibe: “If you can’t afford to pay for all this stuff you can’t afford to do it.”