Arthur Attwell

Publishers are desperate, tooth-grindingly, gut-suckingly desperate for really good editors. They do exist, all five of them, but we have a lot of books to publish. After explaining the Sunday Times Literary Awards judges' disappointment at the quality of editing in South African books, Michelle Magwood says: "I await the derisive cries of publishers to begin raining down on my head". Quite the contrary: as publishers we are desperate, tooth-grindingly, gut-suckingly desperate for really good editors. They do exist, all five of them, but we have a lot of books to publish. Many of us disagree on the reasons for this dire situation, but most would agree on a few key points:

1. Good editors are not made in editorial training courses. As children, good editors read voraciously, nurtured like great sportspeople from an early age. As a result they understand literary detail, subtlety, and the big picture both intuitively and explicitly, and they are ruthless critics of their own work. South Africa, as a whole, has a pitiful record for encouraging reading among young people. Our lack of libraries and school librarians is not improving the situation.
2. Editors dangle low on the vertical ladder from typist to publisher. So many great editors quickly accept promotions to managerial or publishing positions, because many South Africans equate excellence with professional status, and someone who is good at their job wants to be recognised as such, and to be paid well for it.
3. In the age of outsourcing, almost all editors in local publishing are freelance editors, so they take on a wide range of bread-and-butter work for corporates and NGOs, and have little time for in-depth editing of creative work, which is seldom as well paid, in part because it is more fun. Very few editors are dedicated to editing creative work, therefore they do not develop the particular talents creative writing needs in an editor. In addition, editors working alone at home are distracted, anxious about cash-flow, and too far from the publisher to absorb the publisher's energy and vision for a book, and to enact that vision in its pages.
4. Most editors don't know what good editors actually do. Few publishers know either. Perhaps it is because they are not interested, or perhaps because they don't know how to find out. Good editing is never praised or explained publicly. Authors seldom thank their editors, especially not for specific efforts, say, rescuing dialogue or cutting drivel. And publishers don't have or take the time to show potentially good editors what good editing involves. Generally, editors live in a blackened room of professional ignorance that is only partly of their own making.
5. Unlike countries with large book industries, we have very few literary agents, because there is not yet enough money in literary agency. Literary agents help to shape a book before it reaches a publisher; their energy drives vision and excellence; their pitches flesh out editorial briefs by their very existence; they provide a network that connects authors and editors and establishes good partnerships; they know what to look for in an edit, so they can fill in when a publisher doesn't have time to review an edit; and they absorb the tensions and anxieties that drive editors and authors and publishers apart.

These problems are deeply psychological and financial. A solution will be slow and require massive effort and spending. It will need government spending on libraries; more literary awards from civil society and corporates; and courses and institutes from universities and publishing companies with more demanding standards.

I have myself abandoned a potentially good novel to mediocrity by my naive and mediocre editing. So I know that the first step is cheap and simple: editors themselves must realise their importance in the process. And wannabe editors must actively find out what a good editor actually does. That only requires some application, and a refusal to stand for mediocrity in their own work, no matter what they're getting paid.