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I heard from a fellow writer the other day who was considering approaching some publishing houses with an offer to work as a freelance editor for them. You know, just to pick up a few extra bucks after the holidays. She had read somewhere that publishers occasionally hire outside help when their stack of manuscripts starts to back up to unmanageable proportions.
She wanted to know whether or not working as a part-time editor would hurt her chances of getting her own books published.
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It's a good question, one I hadn't stopped to consider before, even though I have worked both sides of the editorial desk on numerous occasions. I told her that I didn't think it would have any effect on her getting her own works published, since most publishers don't really care from where the books they produce come--only that they're big sellers.
But that started me thinking. If publishing houses hire full-time staffs of editors to handle their book acquisitions and pre-production tasks, and if those editors are constantly falling behind their own deadlines, what do those editors at all of those publishing houses really do? I mean, a water cooler can service only so many bodies at any given time. And the coffee lounge can only seat so many slackers. So what do they do?
Then I began wondering why so many editors these days are constantly responding to e-mails that they're out of office until such-and-such a date (usually a week or more into the future). Why?
I mean, if the editors at work every day aren't getting their work done, and the editors who are out of the office aren't getting their work done, who's doing the work?
I wish I had the answer to that, but I don't. I mean, I know some good, hard-working editors. I've even been taken out to lunch by a few of them from time to time.
Maybe that writer who asked me about freelance help was onto something. Maybe that's the dirty little secret that the publishing industry has been hiding from prying eyes all these years. Maybe they hire outside help to do all the work that their own editorial staffers aren't getting done. And, if that's the case, maybe we all need to start writing publishers to tell them that we're available for part-time freelance editing jobs. At least it would be one foot in the door.
And, while we're at it, maybe I'll ask if they would be interested in reading a really great book about Pliny the Elder that I just finished writing. I mean, what could it hurt?
Until then...
Smoke if you got 'em.
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