You don’t have to floss all your teeth. Just the ones you want to keep.
—dentists’ motto

Everyone’s weighing in these days on the big question: “Do you really need to hire an independent editor? Don’t agents love you just as much without one?”

This is complicated by the use of “editor” for three different jobs in the publishing industry: someone in charge of the writing staff of a periodical (a magazine or newspaper editor), someone who acquires manuscripts for a publisher (an acquisitions editor), and someone who, independently and freelance, works with an author to translate a manuscript from talented amateur to talented professional.

Most folks point out that the blogosphere is absolutely ripe to bursting with amateur critiquers peddling themselves as independent “editors” without actually offering more than what you could get from a moderately-accurate grammar- and spell-checker. This is an excellent thing to point out.

Never part with your hard-earned cash without incontrovertible proof that this “editor” seriously knows how to edit.

And I don’t mean they’ve just taped Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules to their monitor, either.

I mean:

• They know how to read a synopsis and/or manuscript and help the author create from their original vision a concrete, smooth-moving, tension-laden plot to grip the reader from hook to climax.
• They know how to disentangle a currently frustrating manuscript and show the author what’s redundant, what’s sagging, and where to write new scenes to move the plot powerfully forward.
• They know how to find out what’s going wrong when a seemingly beautiful manuscript comes back time and again from agents with a “not quite” rejection letter.
• They know how to line-edit paragraph after paragraph after paragraph of both first-draft and heavily-polished material into professional style without losing the author’s unique voice.
• They see enough manuscripts to recognize rookie mistakes and common overuse of specific techniques.
• They’re familiar enough with the mechanics of publishing to know what authorial tricks publishers are likely to balk at, especially from newbies.
• They know not to put a comma between a subject and verb, no matter how long the subject or how wispy the verb.
• They’re also keeping a keen eye on the Gutenberg-sized shake-up of the publishing industry.
• And they even know what’s wrong with Leonard’s 10 Rules and why.

I mean they have glowing, enthusiastic, explicit testimonials from previous and current clients, both published and unpublished, explaining exactly what those clients like about their services, posted somewhere easily-accessible to all and sundry. (You shouldn’t have to ask. Why keep such things secret?)

In an ideal world, there’s actually some way for you to engage them cheaply and with minimal fuss in complex conversation about their deeper understanding of the craft for as long as you like before you even discuss their editing services.

I mean they know a hawk from a handsaw, people.

If every manuscript being queried today had been through a really good (not just copy edit) professional edit first, the quality of manuscripts agents saw when they opened their inboxes tomorrow morning would jump like a kangaroo. (Just as the quality of the manuscripts publishers’ editors get from agents is—hopefully—measurably greater than what they get through direct submissions.)

So why doesn’t everyone recommend good independent editors for all aspiring writers?

It’s mostly confusion.

Independent editors are on the cutting edge of the changing face of publishing. Some publishing professionals still think reputable independent editors are impossible to differentiate from amateur critiquers trying to make a quick buck off the industry. There are very confident, definitive-sounding explanations out there written six months, nine months, or even some years ago assertively claiming that edited manuscripts are no more attractive than unedited manuscripts.

This is silly. Of course well-edited manuscripts are better-written than unedited manuscripts. Even Hemingway’s manuscripts were better after Maxwell Perkins got his hands on them. Even Kerouac’s scroll manuscript was unpublishable before he and Malcolm Cowley spent a month working it over. Even publisher’s editor Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye had to be edited by Alan Rinzler.

Agents and publishers just don’t want you to think professional editing—even really good professional editing—is a guarantee of publication. It’s not. There are no guarantees.

It’s also partly a very real sense of responsibility. Although my list of requirements for potential independent editors is reasonably exhaustive, many publishing professionals don’t know where to find such an editor on short notice, particularly one they can personally vouch for, particularly one aspiring writers can afford.

And it’s also financial. Independent editors get paid.

Now, a funny thing happened in the publishing industry thirty or forty years ago. We went through all this the first time. But it wasn’t independent editors we were talking about then. It was somebody else.

It was literary agents.

Did you know we didn’t always have agents? Of course you did. Once upon a time, there were writers, and there were publishers, and ever the twain did meet. Writers queried publishers’ editors, and publishers’ editors acquired and edited their manuscripts.

Then someone wrote a book claiming everyone was a writer, they just didn’t know it, and suddenly Being a Writer became one of the Top 10 Destinations. Suddenly writing magazines were born. The writing workshop was born. The writers’ MFA was born.

The flood was born.

And suddenly publishers’ acquisitions editors were drowning in manuscripts from everyone who up until then had been a writer, but just hadn’t known it.

Was the first literary agent some acquisitions editor’s husband or wife trying to pick up part of the workload so they’d still have someone to talk to over the dinner table? The best friend of a bunch of acquisitions editors? An acquisitions editor gone renegade? (Plenty of them do.)

We do know Morton Janklow of Janklow & Nesbit Associates was the one who bumped agents’ commission from the old standard 10% up to the current standard 15%. He also sued William Morrow for trying to refuse to publish a book. * (That’s what happens when you tangle with an ex-lawyer.)

Not only that, but publishers routinely told writers, “You don’t need an agent.” (Some of them still do.) You know why? Because they didn’t want writers thinking agent representation was a guarantee of publication. It’s not. There are no guarantees. Publishers themselves have been known to buy books and refuse to publish them.

Even so, these days agents are everywhere, the gatekeepers of the inner sanctum, and I support them with all my heart. You bet I do.

Even though they cost money. They can’t guarantee publication. And they’re not essential.

The big stick agents carry is access to acquisitions editors and the leverage to negotiate big advances. Top agents understand the business of the industry because they help make it. The contract itself isn’t rocket science. My husband and I have signed real estate contracts that make publishing contracts look like Sesame Street. You can learn them. You have to try.

There have also always been small presses, as well as imprints of large presses, who commonly work directly with authors, no agent involved. My friend Cynthia Wall, author of The Courage to Trust, was asked to write her book by Cypress House Publishing and is now being asked to write a sequel. (Did Wall hired an independent editor? Yes, she did. Does she share her royalties with an agent? No, she does not.) And as the economy carries us all toward the waterfall of the Death of Giant Advances, negotiation is becoming less an issue of leverage and more an issue—as it should have been all along—of long-term goal-setting and, most importantly, cooperation.

In fact, with the advent of self-publishing, the implosion of the big houses and concurrent rise of small presses, and the massively-networked ease of Print On Demand and e-publication, agents are actually getting less essential.

And there are literary agent scams. Boy, are there. You track them down the same places you track down independent editor scams: Preditors and Editors and Writer Beware.

But I still recommend agents. Absolutely. Some of my best friends are agents. Agents have the time and motivation to keep an eye glued permanently on publishing, track its permutations, network with other publishing professionals, build relationships with publishing houses, attend conferences, hash over late-breaking industry news in graphic detail, and generally manage an author’s career so the author has time to—guess what?—write. Besides which, agents like this stuff! Writers, if they’re smart, like to write. They’re not the same thing.

Most of all, the agent’s role as gatekeeper is more important now than ever.

The truth is the business of selling fiction is nothing like the craft of creating it, and if you’ve put all your energy into learning the craft, you can easily be mowed down by the maddened hordes stampeded toward the business end. Agents may have been invented to alleviate this problem, but now the sheer numbers mean, honestly, the busiest agents need agents of their own. (That’s why they hire assistants, rely increasingly on recommendations, and even refuse unsolicited submissions.)

Agents building relationships with good independent editors only makes sense in today’s publishing environment. Those of us in the trenches with aspiring writers know who’s got fresh ideas. We know who’s in it for the long haul and who’s an amateur looking to take advantage of what seems, to them, like a glorified lottery. We also know how to turn an over-used plot into a fresh take on a proven idea. And we have time to help you. Agents and acquisitions editors—although they also know this stuff—do not.

And as acquisitions editors edit less and less, more and more agents are struggling to edit their clients’ manuscripts without either the time or training to do it effectively. Don’t believe anyone who tells you excellent agents aren’t taking on editing chores because acquisitions editors no longer have time to do it. They are. And this bodes ill for everyone concerned—especially the reader of the future.

Reputable agents and publishers—the smart ones, in my humble opinion—are already turning their sights our way, particularly as the economy makes the growing lack of publishers’ in-house editing more and more obvious and entrenched.

Which will make it much easier to differentiate the really good independent editors from the amateurs.

Which will help everyone involved. Enormously.

Welcome to the new world of publishing.