EDITORS

 

Editors are to be cherished. Or maybe not

 

I have been a professional novelist for nearly twenty years now. My output isn’t what it was, I don’t move in the publishing world like I used to, and I’m still in my lawyering job, but I’ve met many editors through the years. They were all good people, all wanting the same thing: to produce a book that will do well, because if the book does well, their profile improves.

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Editors are like all people, in that they have egos and career ambitions, and what gets an editor noticed is not who they edit, but who they discover.

 

And they will feed your ago, tell you how great you are, how much they are going to do for you, and you’ll think that you’re both backing the same horse, you, and you’ll both enjoy some glorious future together.

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That isn’t how it works in reality, because your editor is spread-betting, backing as many horses as they can, telling all the writers in their stable the same things. Unfortunately, there are only so many places on the winner’s podium.

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imagine the editorial meetings, with each editor pushing their own discovery, each trying to get the best allocation of the marketing budget, the best slot for sales. What they told you at the beginning was what they wanted to do, if it were a perfect world and everyone else will agree to their plan, but it won’t be the editor who’ll make the final decisions. Like which books to pitch to the big shops and supermarkets? Or which book is going to be the lead book in the summer marketing campaign? Or even in which month your book will be released? Will you get the May slot, when people are buying for their holidays, or will you end up in the graveyard January slot, when no one is buying anything? I remember being told that no one wanted the slot when a new Harry Potter was coming out, because supermarket slots are about shelf space, and a new Harry Potter would take up too much of the valuable space.

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What an editor wants to do isn’t always the same as what they are able to do, but what the editor will want is for one of their books to be the big seller. It won’t matter to the editor if it’s yours, provided it is one of theirs. An editor wants to build their career, not yours. I don’t criticise them for that. My royalties won’t pay their mortgage.

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But you should still cherish them, because a good working relationship makes for a better book. They are, however, merely that, work colleagues.

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They are invariably posh, but their better education had a positive impact on my bad grammar. That isn’t to diminish their ability, but it can be no coincidence that the one editor I have had who I regarded as a friend as much as a colleague, Keshini Naidoo, was from St Helens, and had a northern accent and a fondness for Pimblett’s Pies.

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I have no doubt that my books have been improved due to the work of editors, but more than anything, you need a champion in the boardroom. You won’t be there to explain why you should be the publisher’s focus, so you need your editor to do that. They might be backing more than one horse, but at least make sure that you are one of the horses.

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Back to the idea that it’s who they bring to the publisher that gets them noticed, not who they edit.

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I moved to Sphere from HarperCollins after being approached by Dan Mallory, who later went on to write The Woman In The Window under the pseudonym AJ Finn, which became a worldwide smash and a Netflix film. Dan is American, and as I was writing Next To Die, my first book with Sphere, he decided to return to the States. To his credit, he called me to tell me personally, rather than just a farewell email, so I knew there’d be a change of editor, but I was Dan’s project, not the project of the person who inherited me. Would things have turned out differently had Dan stayed? I’ll never know.

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What I do know is that Sphere were great to work with, an extremely good publisher, but my new editor had her own preferences, and the offer they made me for three more books, after the three I had written, wasn’t good enough to make me want to stay. My guess is that it was one designed to make me leave, which it did, but that’s business. It’s about pounds and pence, and the advance I’d got to go to Sphere was a good one, so I’d become an expensive hangover from Dan Mallory’s tenure. I was fine with that. After all, their money was in my bank account, so it felt like it was their problem, not mine.

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I left Sphere, wrote my Johnny Cash book, Lost In Nashville, and was then approached by Bonnier, who were setting up a crime fiction imprint. They were making silly financial offers, which I gladly accepted. They brought in an editor after I had been signed, so again, I wasn’t her project, and perhaps if she had been in place from the beginning I wouldn’t have had an offer. She had her own favourites, her own stable to build. I signed for three books. Stayed for two. I took their money and went to Hera instead, which is where I still am, and happy to be.

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The advice is to cherish your editor, but if it isn’t working out, be prepared to move on. Editors move all the time, and if you have signed a deal, you don’t have a job, you have a business. A publisher will assess their likely returns, and might just cut you loose. They are prepared to be ruthless with you, so be prepared to be ruthless back, but cherish your editor, however imperfect the relationship.

 

Remember, it’s all office politics, which brings me to the next page: don’t be the tortured artist.