How to be an editor
& an exclusive offer for our growing Substack community!
What does it mean to be an editor? To carefully hold the world of a writer in your hands and help shape it is an important job in the publishing ecosystem.
In this extract from her article for the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook , Željka Marošević, Editorial Director of Jonathan Cape, describes her process to ensure a book is thoughtfully edited and prepared for publication.
My aim when I sit down to edit a book is to be the Platonic ideal of a reader. I am the most loving and supportive reader the writer will ever have, and I am always on their side. My belief in them is unwavering. It’s important to establish that at the beginning because I want my writers to feel completely held as they do the hard and important work of wrestling with their manuscript to ensure it meets its potential. When I edit, I pay absolute attention and try to notice everything before another, less forgiving, reader does.
If the writer’s job is to pull a reader into the world of their book and take them on a journey, my job is to notice every time a reader is spat back out into the real world. Sometimes the issue is structural: for example, the beginning might not be clear; a character disappears halfway through the book; one of the storylines is undeveloped so the book feels unbalanced, and sometimes it’s on a line level: a scene is reported when it should be dramatized; dialogue isn’t working hard enough; we need more or less detail about a character. I realised long ago that it doesn’t help to have an ego; instead I ask annoying, sometimes obvious questions at the risk of sounding stupid because I want to make sure we have interrogated everything before that other, less sympathetic, reader does.
Are you interested in becoming an editor? If so, keep reading as we have an exclusive offer for our growing Substack community!
Edit Academy | Saturday 7th March 2026 | 9:30am-4.30pm | Bloomsbury Publishing, 50 Bedford Square, London
Edit Academy, an intimate full-day event held in partnership with The Literary Consultancy (TLC), presents an unmissable chance to learn from industry professionals and focus on the core skills required to take a book from first to final draft. Attendees will also benefit from guidance on author management and the opportunities (and pitfalls) that come associated with stepping out as freelance editor.
The day includes:
Developmental editing: how to look at a fiction and non-fiction manuscript as a whole, and offer feedback on structure, character and plot
Line editing: how to work with writing at a sentence and language level
How to work with authors
How to find work as an editor (in-house and freelance)
Tickets (including lunch and refreshments) are £149, but with the code WASUBSTACK15, you can get 15% off the ticket price.
You can also email events@writersandartists.co.uk if you’d like to attend, but would prefer to set up a payment plan. The code applies to all payment plans too.