Well, it’s finally happened. I have driven an editor out of the business! Okay, maybe I’m not personally responsible for this…but I am losing an editor and I’m kind of bummed about it. In fact, when she told me the other day, the first thing out of my mouth was, “NOOOOO!!!!!” I’m not going to say which editor it is because I don’t think this is public knowledge yet. But I have worked on several projects with this editor and while I had a feeling she wasn’t going to stick around forever, I had hoped she’d be around for a few more projects.
One advantage to working with smaller publishers is editors tend to stay put. I’ve only lost one editor since I started publishing books 13 years ago (well, unless you count losing my Sweet Valley Twins editor…but I sort of decided to stop writing SVT books when she left, so I don’t really count her). And that was many years ago. This was an editor with one of the regional presses I worked with early on. I never fully embraced the new editor. In fact, I only did one more book with this press after my editor quit. (Though that wasn’t entirely because I lost my editor…I did have an opportunity to do another book with them, but they changed their contracts and decided they weren’t going to pay royalties anymore; they were just going to do flat fee books. That was the real reason I never wrote another book for them.)
Losing this editor is going to be much harder than losing that other editor was. I’ve known this one longer. I’m much more invested in this publishing house than I ever was in the regional press. And I’m very invested in my current project with this editor. She was, too! It’s hard to imagine working on future books with anyone else. Who else is going to get what I’m trying to do the way she does? Who else is going to put up with my endless tweaking?
Maybe there won’t even be any future books? Nothing in publishing is certain…
Hopefully there will be more books. And hopefully I will come to like and respect a new editor as much as I like and respect the current one. A new editor COULD even be a good thing…a new editor will have new ideas and may send me down roads I would never have gone down before.
Oh, that’s too bad. Is she leaving to do something else?
She’s leaving publishing altogether. I know you feel my pain…though it worked out for you!
Sorry to hear your editor is leaving, but I hope her replacement will turn out to be just as wonderful.