ABSTRACT
Good editors wipe their fingerprints off the text and erase all traces of their presence, ceding credit to the author alone, whereas incompetent editors leave so many mistakes in a text that readers become uncomfortably aware the editor has failed to perform their role conscientiously. Mandy Brett, an editor at leading Australian independent publisher Text, encapsulates this idea of editing as self-effacement: the editor is ‘a servant whose principal task is to make someone else look good and not be observed doing it’. Book editors may have looked askance at the practice, particularly as editors in other industries, such as newspapers, magazines and film-making, are often accorded celebrity status and credited with setting the tone of the finished product. In contemporary publishing, the job title ‘editor’ obscures as much as it reveals about an individual’s professional responsibilities. The most senior editorial role is the commissioning or acquisitions editor, also known in some houses as the publisher.
