I think Lillie's on to something, though. The idea of allowing limited editing to select readers is super. Not so much for articles where editors would have six fits and a cow if you ran it by someone else, but for books it sounds like a great idea.

I've had people run it past friends, employees, coworkers, acquaintances, and the oddest was a personality the client was trying to woo. It's why I'm adamant about this. I can't please the world AND the client, so how about I stick with those who are paying?

I, too, have read posts about you including this in your contract, so I have since done the same thing. I don't want to get caught with that headache again from a client who finds it necessary to get the opinion of someone like their hairdresser who's using their grade school grammar lessons to edit your work.

. . . a new arrival at the company was invited to give her thoughts. Keen to make her mark, I think, she sent round an email entitled "Further Amendmants" (sic) with a very heavily marked up version of my work. You can imagine what those amendmants comprised.

A call was arranged to discuss the amendmants and I have to say I defended my territory admirably, compromising for the sake of the relationship on those bits that she hadn't completely ruined.

I hate jargon, but I confess I wheeled out big words such as "tautology" and "hyperbole" to articulate why my original was better. At one point, the other person on the call, who I'd been dealing with up until her arrival, said: "I've no idea what hyperbole means, but I agree – Clare's version sounds better".

That's the great thing about being a writer – we know how to make a case!

Paula, that's a narcissist right there. I'm sorry – I don't give one hoot most times if I get a byline or not, but I think it's the height of insensitivity, ego, and shameless self-promotion to tag your name at the end of magazine articles as the editor. Your name's on the masthead – be satisfied with the status that comes with that.

I wonder if she's had negative backlash from those who hated her editing style? Hmmm…

Luckily I don't usually have to deal with editing by committee. But a long time ago a local city magazine had a dictator-like editor who re-wrote every line in the magazine to be in her voice. She also stuck her "edited by" byline under the authors' names. Seriously. Apparently she had no clue how unprofessional that made her look, and that she was openly ridiculed by most if not all writers who ever contributed to that magazine.

I'd Google her name to see whatever happened to her, but like at least half of the parts of speech, I've blocked it from my memory.

I love it. I'm glad to know of another way!

I actually encourage my editing clients to get input from other people on their book manuscripts. I don't think one person has all the answers, and the books have been made much stronger as a result.

However, I recommend that the author selects readers with specific talents, then I send the advance reading copies asking for the readers' feedback. Of course, the author talks to them in advance, and they have agreed to serve as advance readers and are expecting to hear from me. People are usually eager to do this for a listing in the acknowledgements and an autographed copy of the book.

We tell them specifically what we want from each of them.

For example, in a recent book, we asked an expert in Judaism to review the ritual of the Passover dinner the characters attended. The author had left out a blessing, and I didn't know the ritual and didn't catch it. Another reader, who lives in the geographic area where the book was set, pointed out that the author had Indians living in teepees when they actually lived in caves. A third reader is very knowledgeable about the origins of words, and he found a couple of words that weren't used at the time of the book.

The author had spent years researching the history and still missed those things. Although I checked the dates on words I thought were too modern, I didn't even think to check the two the advance reader found; I thought they were words that had been around that long. And without doing extensive research, I wouldn't know the details of a ritual of a religion that I know little about or what kind of dwellings Indians lived in during a particular point in history in a specific geographic location.

Sometimes the advance readers do make suggestions about grammar, etc. that are wrong. But I just ignore them. All the input comes back to me, and I only change or discuss with the author those things that are legitimate.

Having the advance readers submit their suggestions to me rather than the author does two things: it keeps him from dealing with the ridiculous suggestions, and it encourages the advance readers to be honest in their feedback about the story without fear of hurting the author's feelings. The system has worked very well for my clients and me, and I always recommend authors get feedback from other people.

The differences, I think, between what I do and the situations you describe are 1) that I as the editor deal with the advance readers, and the author isn't inundated with wrong suggestions and 2) I as an editor don't know everything and can't possibly catch everything in a book length manuscript, especially on topics that I'm not expert in, whereas you are an expert in what you write.

Lillie Ammann
A Writer's Words, An Editor's Eye