Interesting blog on the Guardian website which talks about book publishing from an editor's point view. Louise Tucker is, as she says, an editor for one of the big four publishers in the UK. They publish 400 books a year. She is defending some of the perennial complaints about publishing - not enough editorial input to books, too many awful celebrity books, etc, and suggests that if people want better publishing of better books, they should buy at full price and not at Tescos (or here it would be KMart/Big W).
As I've read this today, after reading all the stuff about A&R in Australia, I found her arguments were a little bit hollow. But I do think that many editors do the job because they love it, and in spite of the bean counters. I've heard more than one story of an editor fighting to publish a book they love by a new author, and being shot down by either marketing or the bean counters.
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ABC radio's Book Show had an interesting section on structural editing last week. (The audio is still available here but will probably go soon.)
I started to listen to it at work but felt a bit guilty because we're now being nagged about unnecessary downloads.
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