“The role of the publisher isn’t to take a book that’s pretty much finished and turn it out to the public. Editors help shape books in significant ways. A good editor doesn’t just tell you that you have made typos or that your sentences are grammatically incorrect; a good editor looks at every part of a book, from character development to plotting to theme, and tells you what doesn’t work, what works really well, what needs to be cut, what needs to be built up. A good editor reconstructs a story from the raw materials and makes it as good as it can possibly be.”

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from Why We Still Need Publishers by Susie Rodarme (via rinceya)

It feels pompous to reblog this, but it IS what we editors try to do, and very nicely said.

(via curiousmartha)