Much beloved editor?strictly editorial

September 10, 2006

The authors of a few of the manuscripts I've edited have been good enough to mention me by name in the acknowledgments, sometimes neatly, once at unnecessary length. This is quite decent of them, but nonetheless somehow embarrassing. Let me—as it were—stand behind the sofa, unnoticed with any luck, near the doorway, a little bit apart and somehow safe from scrutiny, an exit conveniently nearby.

In front of me now, on a lovely late Sunday morning when I'd rather be outside in the nearly autumn, is a 450-page manuscript on disease prevention and social policy, a dry tome not altogether a topic I'd have selected from a list of opt-in editorial projects (though it was, I suddenly realize, entirely opt-in, but no matter). As I read through the acknowledgments with my fingers at the keyboard and track changes enabled, I am suddenly taken aback, stopped cold by the final sentence.

I enjoy writing, but whatever felicity of expression there may be in this book owes a great deal to the work of a consummate, highly professional, and much beloved editor.

Flattering but ... hoyah ! also daunting, no matter which way you interpret the anonymity.

That's the real question: who the author is referring to. After six pages of naming person after person, why close with an a nameless one? I see two possibilities. One is a much beloved and well-known individual who asked not to be identified by name. The other is a blind faith trust in a line and copy editor the author has been told will work on the manuscript.

A colleague floated the suggestion that the author was thanking a developmental acquisitions editor. I disagreed. The author specifically names her publishing house editor and spends a paragraph thanking that individual. The author then identifies her spouse as her in-house editor and spends a paragraph thanking him. It seems to me, then, that no one is left but a person the author could not identify by name because she didn't know the name. A clue to that effect is in the comment the author inserted in the acknowledgments:

I would like to add more here when the production process is closer to completion. there surely will be more people to thank.

So endeth this episode of a minuscule yet somehow engaging editorial mystery.