@Kyt: You raise a good point, they are like good mechanics. The amount of patience you require to become a good one too. Well said.

And to agree wholeheartedly with @Luke. Every time I’ve worked with an editor I’ve learned a heaptonne about the entire process of storytelling and that’s the way that I’d like to see it. Every time I’ve worked hand-and-hand with a good editor (and they’re like mechanics!—a good one is worth more than gold) I’ve not only come out the other side with a better novel overall, but a stunning, deep-seated confidence in my own ability to write something more challenging for my next project.

Our Internet fans and audience certainly guide and focus our direction; but a good editor who can communicate the mechanics and fabric of the art will leave an author with a better story to tell next time.

There still appears to be a barrier to credibility in web fiction. I’ll talk more about this tomorrow; am starting to worry about this.

I agree with your comments around needing editors in a more mentoring capacity. From the academic side I have found editors useful when they shift from gatekeeper, to mentoring. Now we have agents who are gatekeepers (how the hell did that happen). A real, honest to goodness ‘editor’, is someone who brings the best out in a work, from my very limited experience! I have heard of agents shaping work and getting it ready to sell but on the whole it’s more a meat market mentality. I used to follow an agent who said authors shouldn’t expect to make a living at writing while running a blog on how he made a living as an agent.

I think this strikes at the heart of your argument. What role do editors play in helping authors to write better and be able to make a living from writing. They don’t. They filter out everything else because of poor distribution models and a desire to create the next bestseller. When you only cater to that end of the market, there can be no other alternative but to try and make things marketable. Hopefully the re-interest in web fiction will help to flatten out the distribution and open up new and interesting ways for editors and authors to participate.

@Miladysa: =)

@MCM: My hope is that as soon as editors and their loyalties shift to favour the writer, we’d be better off, and not at the brutal mercy of a particularly nasty editor, so willing to destroy your story for the sake of ‘marketability’.

I do agree, though, that in the future, the ACTUAL editors will break out and start taking control of the literary landscape. And in the process, you’ll get to see what editors are actual editors, and which ones are just self-important blowhards who happened to find themselves working for a book company.

I don’t need an editor to tell me to change a word. That’s not better, that’s just different. I need an editor to tell me when an entire chapter or character just isn’t working. That’s what a good editor does.