Quercus Books

Editor Interview: Jane Wood

Today we have a special treat for you. Our brilliant fiction publisher Jane Wood tells us about her authors, her inspirations, her favourite books and the general day-to-day challenges of being an editor.

Mark Thwaite: What was your first job in publishing, Jane?

Jane Wood: My first job in publishing was in 1982 as assistant to the late, great Barley Alison, who had her own imprint at Secker & Warburg. At that time Secker was the literary imprint of Heinemann Publishers. The walls were lined with first editions of Kafka, Thomas Mann, Colette – many of the great European writers of the 20th century.

I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Like many literary imprints, Secker has been swallowed up and it is now Harvill Secker, part of Random House.

Mark Thwaite: How did you become an editor?

Jane Wood: I learned on the job. At that time it was the only way. There were no publishing courses or degrees. As an editor’s assistant, you quickly gain editorial experience. You read and write reports on manuscripts; you write jacket copy; you check proofs. I was lucky to be taught by two legendary editors. One was Barley Alison. The other was John Blackwell at Secker, also now dead. Both of them were brilliant editors and devoted to their authors.

Mark Thwaite: How long have you been at Quercus and where were you before this?

Jane Wood: I’ve been at Quercus for three years. After Secker & Warburg I moved to paperback publishing for a few years, at Arrow. It was great experience, but paperback publishing (unless paperback is the original format) is all about marketing, not editing, and editing is what I love. I moved to Macmillan, then Orion, where I was in charge of the Fiction List for twelve years.

Mark Thwaite: What are the key skills an editor needs to do their job well?

Jane Wood: Obviously, you need to love books because an editor’s job eats up time. Nine to five, it is not. You need imagination and an eye for detail. And you must have empathy with authors, understand and appreciate what they do. If ever you think that you, as an editor, could write a better book than they, then write it!

Mark Thwaite: What do you think an editor ‘brings to the table’ that a good writer (with good grammar!) doesn’t already have?

Jane Wood: It’s a question of objectivity. Authors are by definition very close to their books, often too close to see the flaws. Of course, sometimes there are no flaws, or only minor ones. One of the best aspects of the job is that every author and every book is different. Some books need work on the structure or the plot; others need work on the characters – bringing one forward or knocking another one back.

Some authors overwrite (one thing I’m always saying to authors, especially debut authors, is ‘less is more’) while others underwrite. Some novels have slow starts and need the pace to be stepped up with cutting, or bringing an action scene forward. Or the ending is rushed as the writer – longing to type ‘The End’ – hurries to get there! Or the middle of a novel sags a bit. But ultimately editing is a negotiation between author and editor and the author should have the last word. They wrote the book; it is their creation.

Mark Thwaite: Can you give us any gossip on which writers have been hardest to edit – and which the easiest?!

Jane Wood: I’m not mentioning any names! I find most authors like being edited and are grateful that you are prepared to spend time improving (you hope) their work. The hardest to edit are the ones who feel destroyed if you whisper a word of criticism, but I’ve only come across those very rarely. Journalists are generally pretty relaxed about revising a script. They’re used to being subbed.

Mark Thwaite: Day-to-day, what is the most challenging aspect of your work?

Jane Wood: Juggling all the different aspects of the job. There’s a lot of detail; much of it is quite mundane but it’s important to get it right. Acquiring books and editing them is only one part of your job. You as the book’s editor are its in-house sponsor; it all starts with you, how you pitch the book and communicate your enthusiasm to your colleagues.

Mark Thwaite: Is there anyone in the book industry you admire/have been inspired by?

Jane Wood: I admire different people for different qualities. Some colleagues have been wonderful managers, able to get the best out of their staff. Others are brilliant at creative marketing – a skill I hugely admire. But when it comes to actual editing, Barley Alison and John Blackwell were my role models.

Mark Thwaite: If you hadn’t become an editor, what do you think you’d be doing today?

Jane Wood: Can’t imagine! I would have liked to do something with my hands that required great skill, though I haven’t a clue whether I would have had such skill. A picture restorer, perhaps?

Mark Thwaite: What do you do when you are not editing? Do you write yourself?

Jane Wood: I’ve had a few short stories published and I wrote half a novel once. It was turned down. But I think my skill, if I have one, is as an editor. Spare time is spent with my husband, family and friends. Apart from reading, I’m a big consumer of what London has to offer in terms of culture and there’s never enough time – or money – to do all the things you want. But I take in quite a bit of theatre, art, opera, concerts, movies, etc. And I power walk in an attempt to keep fit.

Mark Thwaite: Did you have an idea in your mind of an ‘ideal’ reader? Did you edit a piece of work with a specific audience/reader in mind?

Jane Wood: I don’t have an ideal reader and I don’t edit with a specific reader in mind. I just try to make each book better while it remains essentially itself. If I wanted to change the book drastically, then I probably wouldn’t be the right editor for that book. But I often think, when I’m reading or editing a book, ‘so and so would love this novel’.

Mark Thwaite: What are you working on now?

Jane Wood: A fantastic novel called The Invisible Ones by Stef Penney. To be honest, it’s so good it doesn’t need much work. Next I shall turn to a novel called Trashed, a vivid, gritty crime debut set in contemporary Glasgow by Anna Smith, a journalist. I’m looking forward to that.

Mark Thwaite: Who is your favourite writer? And who is your least favourite?

Jane Wood: I don’t have a favourite, but I’m an old-fashioned girl and I love the great novelists of the 19th century above all others. George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Tolstoy, Flaubert. Huge characters, agonizing moral conflicts, fantastic storytelling that appeals equally to heart and mind. I prefer novels of character to novels that deal in abstract ideas.

Mark Thwaite: Who is your favourite fictional character?

Jane Wood: So many great characters in fiction, it is difficult to narrow it down. Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch and Mr Knightley in Emma. But there are lots of others.

Mark Thwaite: Do you have a favourite quote?

Jane Wood: Shelley said: ‘Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.’ I’ve always clung to this notion of literature in particular, and the arts in general, as a means of interpreting the world and our place in it.

Mark Thwaite: What is/are your favourite book(s)?

Jane Wood: For one book that delivers just about everything that I look for in a popular – as opposed to literary – novel I would pick Gone With the Wind: huge and sweeping with an epic backdrop; two larger-than-life characters who are flawed but deeply compelling, and a tragic, what-might-have-been love story.

Mark Thwaite: What is the last book you started but didn’t finish?!

Jane Wood: Hmm, can’t remember. If I’m not enjoying a book I tend to skip – faster and faster – rather than abandoning it completely.

Mark Thwaite: Do you have any tips for the aspiring writer!?

Jane Wood: For beginners, I’d offer the well-worn cliché ‘Write what you know’. Start with a good title and an interesting theme to hook the reader. Try to make the opening gripping because busy editors often don’t read all that far if a work of fiction doesn’t engage them quickly. They don’t have time.

Mark Thwaite: What do you think of e-books, online writing, blogs, fan-fiction etc? Are you involved in any online writing yourself?

Jane Wood: I’m not involved in any online writing but I think anything we can do to take books to market is great. As I said, I’m old-fashioned and I will always prefer a printed book, but I don’t have any problem with e-books so long as the intellectual copyright is protected and paid for. I have a Kindle which is brilliant for downloading submissions to read. I don’t have to carry around so much paper. But I always edit on a hard copy.

Publishers don’t have big marketing budgets so it’s fantastic that we now have the resource of the web to market our books. Anything to spread the word and to sell and market books across all media has to be good.

Mark Thwaite: Are you optimistic about the future of books and reading?

Jane Wood: I’m optimistic about the future of reading but I think future generations are going to turn increasingly to the convenience of e-books. We shall see.

Mark Thwaite: Anything else you would like to say?

Jane Wood: Thank you to anyone who got to The End!