The Changing Face of Publishing Relationships
June 06
In early 2008, Collete Vella received the Beatrice Davis Editorial Fellowship - an award that gives a senior editor in Australia the chance to go to the US and take part in what is, by all accounts, a rough and ready, high-stakes publishing game.
In the latest issue of Meanjin, Vella reflects on her time there and gives some great insight into the shifting shape of publishing relationships - the complex tug and pull between author, editor and agent. You can read the essay in full on the editions page, meanwhile here's a brief extract:
Everyone I spoke to on the subject in New York acknowledged that writers generally have closer, longer term relationships with their agents than with their editors, primarily because agents now are much more of a constant in writers’ lives. These days publishing no longer comprises family businesses, and editors move around from house to house. As agent Simon Lipskar of the Writers House put it, ‘Publishing houses make tough budgetary decisions every day and an editor can be dropped at the flick of a pen. Houses have no loyalty to their editors.’
It seems that only the superstar editors have the power to take their authors with them when they leave a publishing house. Even Julie Grau and Cindy Spiegel, now renowned New York publishers at Spiegel & Grau, had to leave nearly all of their authors behind when they left Riverhead Books. The only author they took with them was Suze Orman, author of the bestselling Women and Money. (That book was a New York Times bestseller last year, but it was propelled back into the number two position in the charts in the week I arrived in New York by an Oprah Winfrey offer that allowed a free copy of the book to be downloaded from her site for a period of thirty hours—reportedly, 1.1 million copies were moved!)
Julie Grau admitted that leaving behind their authors when they changed companies was heartbreaking for them, but two had subsequently defected. ‘We’re hoping that one day more of them will come across,’ she said.
If authors are closer to their agents, how does this affect the workings between editor, agent and author? Most editors I spoke with had good relationships with most agents, and they particularly appreciated having an agent around in times of dispute—as a mediator between themselves and the author. Rachel Kahan, senior editor at GP Putnam’s Sons, said, ‘Most agents are pretty good at coming to your aid when you have someone unreasonable.’ Julie Grau told of the time when she had developed such a close relationship with Irish writer Nuala O’Faolain that the author fired her agent. ‘What do I need an agent for?’ O’Faolain had said. Grau told me it was the worst thing that could have happened. ‘The agent was a buffer, she allowed the boundaries to be kept.’ None the less it’s worth nothing that the editor-author relationship continued between Grau and O’Faolain until the writer’s death last year.
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Comments
06 Jun 09 at 15:31
An interesting piece, though I am a bit surprised to read the following assertion: 'But in Australia... commissioning editors and publishers here have at their disposal experienced non-commissioning editors and a pool of talented freelance editors to whom they are willing to delegate manuscript development and structural editing work. (Non-commissioning editors in the United States tend to act strictly as production editors or copyeditors with limited influence.) Australia’s system means that the editorial vision, and indeed the broader vision for the book, remains under the direction of house editors, better ensuring the integrity of the work.'
Why is it, then, that we are often hearing that there is not enough money to pay for Australian fiction to be rigorously edited? or is that something that MSM journos like to bandy around? just wondering. (BTW Richard Nash left Soft Skull in late 2008.)
...07 Jun 09 at 18:56
genevieve - when I saw your comment I realized it was a mistake not to post this during the week, when I could get hold of Colette! I'll be interested to get her response to your question (once I let her know she's up on Spike!)
...09 Jun 09 at 12:59
Hi Genevieve - in my experience, Australian fiction is still rigorously edited, definitely ... I have seen even very experienced authors go through two, three, four edits to get a work to be as good as it can be. I often get frustrated by the myth that editing doesn't exist anymore - it seems that in reviews it's easier to say that something was badly edited instead of 'the writer wasn't successful in achieving what they wanted to achieve'. It's interesting though that in the US, editors certainly seem to be a lot more interventionist than they are here in Australia. When it comes to fiction especially, I personally resist highly interventionist editorial strategies because I think that one risks imposing one's own ego on the manuscript, blurring the ownership of the work. I do think that the editor's role is to help the author realise their vision.
...10 Jun 09 at 9:09
thank you for that, Colette (and Sophie).
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