Yes, indeed ... with all the instant pub bullshit ... has the 'working-behind-the-scenes' wonder-makers (and often kingmakers of authors) been left out in the cold?
Not if the new and up-and-coming authors are smart!
This view from the Sydney Morning Herald:
The future of publishing will be a tale of two books
Anybody who's been following the constant stream of bitching and moaning on my Twitter and Facebook feeds of late will know I have been editing and rewriting a manuscript. The third, and probably final book, in the Disappearance trilogy.
It's been kind of hell, and yet it's necessary. It's always necessary.
The people I feel sorry for are my editors, who get dragged arse backwards through the rusty barbed wire of the first and second drafts. You very rarely hear about editors in publishing. They're mysterious creatures, working in secret, shying away from bright lights and loud noises. Publishers hide them away, too. All the better to create an air of mystery and power around their authors. To encourage the idea that we are just so hell damn brilliant we get up in the morning and start farting out perfect copy.
We don't.
If we're lucky we have editors who smash and carve and tweak our raw output into something readable. I've been lucky to have some very good editors over the years, especially Jon Gibbs and Joel Naoum, who've been working on my latest book. As an example of how important an editor can be to the final shape of a book, I spent three hours on the phone with Jon the other day, nutting out a timeline issue. It started with just one stray thread that he pulled, quickly leading to the unravelling of the entire manuscript.
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