Yesterday, I received an advanced copy of Subterranean Press’ new anthology,Edited By. The book collects notable works of short fiction that have been, well, edited by Ellen Datlow, one of the most notable short fiction editors in the world of SF/F/H. It’s a beefy book full of stories by some incredible writers, including Elizabeth Bear, Ted Chiang, Nalo Hopkinson, Kelly Link, and many others.
Part of what interests me about this book is the concept behind it and the way it highlights the weird imbalance of awareness about editors in publishing. It is comparatively easy to collect work edited by one short fiction editor than it is to do the same for novel editors. Short fiction editors also seem, in my opinion, much more visible, perhaps because they work with so many authors at a time (a benefit of the short format) than their novel-editing peers.1 This makes it rather easy for us to recognize the work editors do even if we don’t actually know what it is that they do.
Datlow’s many (and exceptional) collections, in a sense, make visible some aspects of the work of editors. After all, most of her collections are of original work, which suggests at the very least that she seeks out submissions from writers (usually solicited, as I understand it), does something to those submissions to make them sexy, and then puts together a book that reflects her editorial vision. We can see that vision. A collection of, say, robot puppy stories will, of course, feature robot puppy stories, but it will also feature something we might call Datlow’s “vision,” which may be quite varied and yet still contains some noticeable features. Just look at the types of writers Datlow publishes (this is not a criticism; I love those writers). And even this is only a fragment of the work that Datlow and other short fiction editors no doubt put into the works they select.
But Edited By also makes me realize that there isn’t a similar market or system in place to recognize the same editorial work of novel editors. Short novels (i.e., novellas) might be a slight exception due to the paucity of editors at that length,2. Otherwise, you can tell just how much people are aware of the work of novel editors by the conversation so many of us have every single year before nominations for the Hugo Awards are due. That discussion usually includes the complaint that so many of us have no way to know what it is that editors actually do because almost none of us work within the publishing industry proper. After all, editorial notes are rarely available to the public — unless you try to sue your publisher and those notes become public in court documents, thereby making you look like an absolute idiot — which naturally makes it impossible for most readers to know what editors do beyond selecting a book and *waves vague hands* suggesting changes most people never see. We also don’t get those materials and visuals from short fiction editors, but the sheer volume of publication for short fiction editors makes it much easier for us to conceptualize what they do to get a story from submission to the “page.” An imperfect conceptualization, no doubt.
So, a book like Edited By is rather curious for me. Hugo Award nominations were due not too long ago, and as usual, I struggled to figure out who to pick for long form editors and had an entirely different problem for short form editors (there are so many good choices, but you only have 5 slots because the Hugo Awards are evil). And here comes a book very clearly designed to show us what a short fiction editor’s career looks like…in the form of a collection…edited by that editor (this is mad meta, y’all).
Will we ever get something like that for novel editors? Novellas, maybe. But novels? I doubt it. I don’t even know if there would be a market for it. The Book Club Edition folks used to release collections of novels back in the day, but those were author forward and rarely mentioned the editor.3 Is there a space for an editor forward collection in 2020? I don’t know. It seems unlikely. But I also don’t work directly in the publishing industry. I’m a freelancer. I get the books after they’ve been selected, developmentally edited, and sexied up. But I’d like to think that maybe a space like that might open up so we can see what novel editors do — and so we can better appreciate that work.
Reading Time
Pondering the Editors Behind Our Fiction
Yesterday, I received an advanced copy of Subterranean Press’ new anthology, Edited By. The book collects notable works of short fiction that have been, well, edited by Ellen Datlow, one of the most notable short fiction editors in the world of SF/F/H. It’s a beefy book full of stories by some incredible writers, including Elizabeth Bear, Ted Chiang, Nalo Hopkinson, Kelly Link, and many others.
Part of what interests me about this book is the concept behind it and the way it highlights the weird imbalance of awareness about editors in publishing. It is comparatively easy to collect work edited by one short fiction editor than it is to do the same for novel editors. Short fiction editors also seem, in my opinion, much more visible, perhaps because they work with so many authors at a time (a benefit of the short format) than their novel-editing peers.1 This makes it rather easy for us to recognize the work editors do even if we don’t actually know what it is that they do.
Datlow’s many (and exceptional) collections, in a sense, make visible some aspects of the work of editors. After all, most of her collections are of original work, which suggests at the very least that she seeks out submissions from writers (usually solicited, as I understand it), does something to those submissions to make them sexy, and then puts together a book that reflects her editorial vision. We can see that vision. A collection of, say, robot puppy stories will, of course, feature robot puppy stories, but it will also feature something we might call Datlow’s “vision,” which may be quite varied and yet still contains some noticeable features. Just look at the types of writers Datlow publishes (this is not a criticism; I love those writers). And even this is only a fragment of the work that Datlow and other short fiction editors no doubt put into the works they select.
But Edited By also makes me realize that there isn’t a similar market or system in place to recognize the same editorial work of novel editors. Short novels (i.e., novellas) might be a slight exception due to the paucity of editors at that length,2. Otherwise, you can tell just how much people are aware of the work of novel editors by the conversation so many of us have every single year before nominations for the Hugo Awards are due. That discussion usually includes the complaint that so many of us have no way to know what it is that editors actually do because almost none of us work within the publishing industry proper. After all, editorial notes are rarely available to the public — unless you try to sue your publisher and those notes become public in court documents, thereby making you look like an absolute idiot — which naturally makes it impossible for most readers to know what editors do beyond selecting a book and *waves vague hands* suggesting changes most people never see. We also don’t get those materials and visuals from short fiction editors, but the sheer volume of publication for short fiction editors makes it much easier for us to conceptualize what they do to get a story from submission to the “page.” An imperfect conceptualization, no doubt.
So, a book like Edited By is rather curious for me. Hugo Award nominations were due not too long ago, and as usual, I struggled to figure out who to pick for long form editors and had an entirely different problem for short form editors (there are so many good choices, but you only have 5 slots because the Hugo Awards are evil). And here comes a book very clearly designed to show us what a short fiction editor’s career looks like…in the form of a collection…edited by that editor (this is mad meta, y’all).
Will we ever get something like that for novel editors? Novellas, maybe. But novels? I doubt it. I don’t even know if there would be a market for it. The Book Club Edition folks used to release collections of novels back in the day, but those were author forward and rarely mentioned the editor.3 Is there a space for an editor forward collection in 2020? I don’t know. It seems unlikely. But I also don’t work directly in the publishing industry. I’m a freelancer. I get the books after they’ve been selected, developmentally edited, and sexied up. But I’d like to think that maybe a space like that might open up so we can see what novel editors do — and so we can better appreciate that work.
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