It’s a complex relationship.

From this writer’s point of view, what makes for a good edi­tor? Unless that edi­tor has asked that a cer­tain book be written—which does happen—the edi­tor needs to under­stand what the writer is try­ing to do, assess the prob­a­bil­i­ty of achiev­ing that goal, and, if achiev­able, make a deter­mi­na­tion about the com­mer­cial val­ue of such a project. Pub­lish­ing is a busi­ness, and a busi­ness needs to make a prof­it. The edi­tor also needs to deter­mine if it is the kind of book with which he/she can work. Not every edi­tor is best suit­ed to work with say, sci­ence fic­tion, a YA, or a pic­ture book. Some edi­tors do have spe­cial­ties and strengths. 

Even when there are pos­i­tive judg­ments for all of the above, the edi­tor needs to deter­mine where such a book fits into the pub­lish­ing sched­ule, its style, and its mis­sion. Then it is vir­tu­al­ly inevitable that the book will require some rewrit­ing and revi­sion. Maybe a lot. The edi­tor there­fore needs com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills to allow the writer to grasp what could (or should be done). That is not sim­ple. A good edi­tor may not be able to com­mu­ni­cate with a good writer (or the oth­er way around) just as any two peo­ple (how­ev­er well-mean­ing) may not be able to com­mu­ni­cate pro­duc­tive­ly. Bad com­mu­ni­ca­tion negates all of the above. Good com­mu­ni­ca­tion enhances all. 

In short, the writer-edi­tor rela­tion­ship is enor­mous­ly com­plex and vital to the whole enter­prise of writ­ing and pub­lish­ing. That said, curi­ous­ly enough, it is almost nev­er talked about. In all the years, I have pub­lished, and I have worked with many edi­tors, nev­er has an edi­tor said to me, “I work this way.”

I sus­pect it is the cause of a lot of the ten­sion between the edi­to­r­i­al side of pub­lish­ing and the writ­ing side. That is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent issue. 

To be continued…