ABSTRACT
The energetic editor will range beyond the easy marks—beyond the authors, agents, and companies with which her firm already does business. Good books can be found wherever good writing is found, and even the most fastidious editor will never forget that her central task is to read the written word omnivorously. When book publishing was a simpler and less competitive business than it is, there were no editors as such. Publishers, aided by skeleton staffs, chose books they wanted to issue, delivered them to the typesetter, quickly printed and distributed them, and then looked for more. The editor's collaborative tasks in the company are variations on this presentational theme. Publishing houses have procedures that encase the business in bureaucratic forms: data sheets, launch meetings, packaging briefs, sales conferences, and print-and-pricing meetings. An editor is on surer ground and may have a more confident stance when she comes to the end of her work, the book's actual publication.
