Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.
[Henry R. Luce—an American Editor]
Business, that’s easily defined—it’s other people’s money.
[Peter Drucker]
This first point is short and simple—
No matter what altruistic motives a publisher may have about bringing great stories to readers, all publishers have the same bottom line:
They are a business and they want to make money.
If a publisher does not make money consistently, guess what? They will soon not be in the publishing business.
Editors are a cog in a publisher’s business. No matter what kind of editing she does (we’ll get to that shortly) or how well she does it (!), the bottom line remains the same.
In other word, publishers don’t really care that this is the book of your heart. That you talked to and sweated over the characters. Wrote nights and sacrificed weekends to complete your 50 000 word, 75 000 word, 100 000 word tome.
What publishers care about is: Is this a marketable story that will sell and make money?
An editor’s job is to help fulfil that expectation.
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