In the late 70’s, when I was senior editor at William Morrow, I went to my boss with an irresistible deal. We had the opportunity to acquire a bestselling author’s latest novel for just $5,000, because a paperback publisher had already bought the softcover rights for a monster advance. My boss was delighted with me—until I told him that I’d edited this writer’s work before, that it would take me a month, and that I wouldn’t be able to do much of anything else while I was working with him on the manuscript.

“It’s out of the question,” he said. “We pay you too much to have you use your time that way.”

The book was published by Knopf, the first of this author’s titles to spend only one week on the bestseller list. I stayed at Morrow a little while longer—taking literary agents to lunch, signing up books, addressing sales conferences, writing catalogue copy. The little editing that got done was performed by my brilliant editorial assistant Gary Fisketjon, now vice president of Knopf. I did some checking around and learned that editors who still actually edited books were becoming increasingly rare in mainstream publishing. If anything was problematical about a manuscript they otherwise liked and wanted to sign up, they just rejected it.

I’d been an editor for nearly twenty years. My talent was becoming obsolete—yet as badly needed as ever. I eventually left mainstream publishing, put together a group of independent editors, and in 1980 founded The Editorial Department. We're now the oldest book-editing firm in the country, serving clients all over the world.

The first decade was, to say the least, difficult. Literary agents I’d worked with while senior editor for Stein and Day and then Morrow resisted the whole idea of writers paying for something they’d always gotten free from publishers. I pointed out that most of them weren’t getting the editing, they were getting rejected—or, if they did land a contract, they got very little in the way of editing along with it. One agent who’d had trouble placing a client’s latest book sent her to us, subsequently sold the book for a handsome five-figure advance to a major publisher, and started spreading the word.

But what attracted most of our clients in the early years was the fact that we undertook the initial read and critique of an entire manuscript for free. We’d then either encourage the writer and make editorial suggestions (which is all some manuscripts need), recommend a specific editorial service for a fee—or, if we felt that no editorial work would result in a publishable manuscript, we’d tell the writer why.

That’s still our policy today, though we now give a more comprehensive critique and charge $2.00 a page for the initial read. As much as I hate to charge a writer whose hopes I may have to dash, reading and critiquing a manuscript takes days of a seasoned professional’s time, and it’s only right that this time be compensated. But we never suggest further services to a writer whose work we think is unlikely to have a shot at publication, with or without editing. As we’ve often pointed out, there are rewards to writing a book other than publication.

At the other end of the spectrum, we attracted some clients whose reputation was already established and who sorely missed the editing they used to get from their publishers. They hired us because they cared about their work, and very few writers can be 100% objective about their own writing. Your book is your child—and who among us can be totally objective about our children?

In 1990 I mailed a press release to The New York Times announcing The Editorial Department’s tenth anniversary. They sent a photographer and a reporter, and the article they ran pronounced authors-hiring-editors a trend. My little company began to get very busy. I started giving lectures and workshops around the country, and the most popular one, Self-Editing, became a book co-authored with then Editorial Department editor Dave King. Dave not only made many creative contributions to the manuscript, he turned Self-Editing for Fiction Writers into a self-help book. Now in its second edition, it’s consistently a best-selling title for writers.

Thanks to the success of that book and the results The Editorial Department has been able to achieve for many of our clients, I still get to do what I love the most: edit manuscripts, all the way from developmental editing—helping a writer strengthen plot and characters—to line editing, helping ensure that all of a writer’s prose reads as well as the best of it reads. I’ve gone through several drafts with a writer, including phone consultations and e-mails flying back and forth. In other cases all the writer has needed is our manuscript evaluation, which critiques plot, character, and style with specific suggestions throughout. The unique nature of what we do and how we do it has attracted many other skilled editors to join our staff. They’re shepherded by my son, Ross Browne, who joined The Editorial Department in 1992 and has been editing manuscripts and expanding the company’s operations ever since.

Together, we’ve had the rich pleasure of seeing scores of our clients get published, most of them first novelists. We’ve had some heartbreaks, too, of course. The agent-matchmaking program Ross instituted is unique and thorough—we have a full-time submissions director—and literary agents trust us because they know our reputation and the quality of the manuscripts we submit. But sometimes, despite our efforts, a match is difficult or impossible to make. Of course it’s cause for rejoicing when a writer gets picked up by an agent and better yet given a book contract by a publisher. And when a published copy of a book I edited is first in my hands, I open it to some point in the middle and actually sniff. Some people love that new-car smell. I love the smell of a just-off-the-press book for which I was the midwife.

I’ve never been bored for a minute with my work. Every book is different, every writer is different, every scene and character and sentence is different. When I read the next draft and find that a good story has become a great story? What a pleasure it is to see what a talented Editorial Department client can do with the balls we throw over the plate. When a writer hits one out of the park, it’s absolutely thrilling.

~ Renni Browne