What's wrong with publishing today


The publishing industry's major convention, Book Expo or BEA, is being held this weekend in New York City. It's not really of much immediate use to writers, except as an excuse to party, and if you're a writer, since when do you need an excuse?

Yeah, I went anyway.

Friday morning before hitting the floor I ran down one of my old editors at Starbucks a few blocks away. Without getting all dopey-eyed about it, the guy was one of the best fiction editors in the business.

I say was because he was so good his publisher gave him cookbooks to edit.

No joke. This encouraged him to get another job, which quickly turned out to be so ludicrous he left publishing all together.

Well not all together; he does free-lancing now and then, but that's about it. He's given up looking for an editing job, at least for the time being. Nobody's hiring, and the people who are hiring want him to edit . . . cookbooks. He's doing pretty well in other fields.

Editing fiction is a lot more difficult than people - especially writers - think. It's a strange kind of talent. A big part of it has to do with handling the writers who, rumor has it, can be difficult to deal with. Even when they arrive in the office unarmed.

Anyway, my former editor looked a hell of a lot more relaxed than while he was at the publishing house. I'm not sure whether that says more about the publisher, or me.