An anonymous literary agent makes a great case for doing away with book editors entirely. The agent points out an embarrassing truth in publishing: Editors will often have their projects shot down by their acquisitions team, often for no real reason at all. The agent suggests streamlining the acquisitions process to the point where agents pitch directly to the publishers.

It is hard not to feel that it would make more sense for agents to do the rounds of the publishers on a quarterly basis and pitch that season’s roster of projects to a focussed team of, say, the fiction and non-fiction publisher and the sales, marketing and publicity directors?

Out of twenty projects ten or more would be shot down in flames, but the rest one would be assured were broadly aimed at the right target and that from then on it’s a question of how well do they deliver.

This would save huge amounts of time for both agents and authors who would be saved the trouble of working on and sending out projects which simply are not going to get published (that year at least).

I've talked to dozens of authors who have told me that agents are basically the new editors: They demand rewrites, they help the author shape the book, they make the book a nearly finished thing even before an editor lays eyes on it. I'm all for editors, though, and I think this agent is, too. What editors need is more power; definitive ownership of the books they're shepherding through the publishing process. But what this agent is envisioning—a world without editors—is a much more likely outcome, at least among the big publishers.