That book was edited?

“That book was awful. Where was the editor in the process?”

Have you ever wondered that? Almostvoid has, according to a comment he left at our last Ask the Editor Free-for-all.

Editing is a collaborative business. For any book, the editor is only a part of the process. And especially in this world of independently published books, the editing can be buried deep. So deep that there have been times, when an author has thanked me in the acknowledgments, I've wondered what they were thanking me for.

I won’t pretend that the days of Maxwell Perkins will return, where an editor will see potential in a rough book from a guy like F. Scott Fitzgerald and then carefully hone and develop it.

Here is my ideal of how the editing process can look:
1) self-editing through numerous drafts
2) developmental editing, round 1
3) developmental editing, round 2
4) line edit
5) proofread

And this is the process before you submit to agents and editors. Unfortunately, today, steps 2 through 5 will cost money from your pocket. That's tough, considering it's an uncertain investment, especially for a first-time author. Will you ever make that money back? Writing has never been a more entrepreneurial venture.

Even if all these steps are taken, an "awful" book can result. Welcome to the subjective world of publishing, where one man's trash is another man's treasure.

Beyond subjectivity, here are some of the limitations of the editing process that might result in your negative opinion of a book:

1) You don't know how many of the suggested edits the author was willing to make. Many authors really don't want an edit. They want someone to tell them how brilliant they are. They brush off suggested changes while brandishing their creative license. I suggest that if you disagree with an edit, at least discuss it with the editor to uncover her reasoning. You might be surprised by what you hear.

2) Editors are not ghostwriters, and since most of us believe there is something sacred at the heart of each creative act, we will never tell someone their concept is crap. We are trying to help the author bring his project to its fullest fruition by capitalizing on its strengths. But reality is, not all ideas are created equal.

3) You don’t know the publisher’s agenda. Whether traditional, indie, or self, the publisher may have a reason for pushing a book through without extraordinary care to its perfection. Such reasons could be related to production schedules, media or event tie-ins, or political agendas. Did you know that the publisher even deems a certain number of proofing mistakes acceptable?

4) You don't know if the above editing process was ever completed. In an ideal world, after any round of substantive changes, the author would submit the manuscript for editing again, since "fixing things" on one's own—especially while still on the learning curve in your first few novels—creates the potential for a whole new slew of problems to arise. A third or fourth developmental round may have been called for, but financial constraints may have cut short the process.

5) You don't know how bad off that manuscript was when it was submitted to the editor. In the manuscripts of first-time authors, other writing problems can lurk beneath more apparent developmental issues. The resulting book may be as vastly improved as any one editing pass could make it. And when a more experienced author has worked with a trusted editor for a long time, it is tempting to submit a draft instead of a finished piece, expecting that the editor will do her usual presto-change-o. If your creative intention matters to you, maybe you best not count on that.

6) We hate to admit this, but not all editors are created equal, either.

What can you learn from this?

Since editing is collaborative, there is only so much you can do on your own—but the more you do, the better. When you hire a developmental editor, hand her the very best version of the work you can muster from critiquing by writing colleagues and diligent self-editing.

Try to open yourself to her perspective—as a fresh reader, she may be more right than you think. If she doesn’t “get” it, it just might be that you have some more work to do.

What else limits the editing process? Let’s hear your thoughts.

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Kathryn Craft is a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, an independent manuscript evaluation and line editing service. Formerly a dance critic and arts journalist, she now writes women's fiction and memoir. The first chapter of her memoir, Standoff at Ronnie's Place, modified as a stand-alone essay, has been published online by Mason's Road, the online journal of Fairfield University's MFA program. She blogs about Healing through Writing.