Editors on Editing

This anthology assembles the comments of prestigious editors to provide an introduction to the multifaceted responsibilities of the working editor. The book portrays the editor as an individual and a skilled professional and reveals the editors' various personalities and temperaments, their attitudes toward literature, their educational backgrounds and thei r involvement with or detachment from their authors. The editors also detail how manuscripts are obtained and selected, criteria used in evaluating a manuscript, and the revising and rewriting of the manuscript, and the intricacies of dealing with authors and agents. Well-known editors offer opinions on the philosophy of editing and discuss the specific skills involved in being a science fiction editor, a literary editor and a mass-market-paperback editor. Also displays the art of editorial letter-writing by some of its classic practioners such as Maxwell Perkins, John Farrar and Pascal Covici. ISBN 0-06-091120-4 (Pbk.) : $14.95.