Books: The Decline of Editing

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Critics of conglomerates argue, without conclusive evidence, that it is now harder to get serious, noncommercial books published. Yet excellent work is still published by conglomerate-owned houses, notably Knopf, a subsidiary of Random House, which in turn is owned by Newhouse Publications; badly written, poorly edited work still pours forth from privately owned houses —Doubleday, for example. A more justified complaint is that the huge bookstore chains, B. Dalton and Waldenbooks, give limited shelf space to titles with less than mass appeal.

The traditional view of publishing as a leisurely life, carried on in mahogany offices and posh restaurants, has been replaced by the harrowing vision of a rat race on a roulette table. With the literary agent acting as croupier, editors must frantically get their bets down on potential bestsellers. Says Viking's Alan Williams: "If Maxwell Perkins were around today, he wouldn't have time to be Maxwell Perkins. He would not be able to sit at Scribner's and have wonderful authors turn up in the morning mail. He would be out grubbing with the rest of us, cozening agents and trying to get onto books earlier and wondering how much money to bid." Adds Georges Borchardt, an agent whose clients include John Gardner, Stanley Elkin and Kate Millett: "The facilities offered by publishers to the artists have declined. Editors who would be capable of editing are not allowed to. They have people breathing down their backs, asking, 'Where is the new bestseller?' and 'Why are you spending so much time on this poor-selling author?' even though he may in time become another James Joyce."

There are, of course, various types of editors in the game. At one extreme are the acquisition editors—"belly editors," in trade jargon—who do their most important work at lunch. There the menu and the contract may get a more careful reading than the manuscript. Then there are the creative editors, who see their task as the finding and overall shaping of a manuscript. Finally, there are the pencil editors, who work line by line on messy or complex manuscripts (although that chore is often left to copyreaders).

All these tasks usually overlap. Most acquisition editors must be adept with the pencil as well as the fork. And they must not only coax a blocked author into action, but also negotiate with copyreaders, handle the details of jacket design and flap copy, and send galleys out to well-known writers in the hope they will respond with enthusiastic blurbs. Once such jobs are completed, editors must become in-house cheerleaders, urging their publicity, advertising and sales departments to make an extra effort on behalf of their books. The average editor is doing all this on at least a dozen books at a time. These are busy operatives with a built-in dilemma. Houghton Mifflin's Jonathan Galassi sees the editor as a double agent. "With the writer, he is collaborator, psychiatrist, confessor and amanuensis; in the publishing house, he must be politician, diplomat, mediator."