From: Brenda_Bowen at prenhall.com <Brenda_Bowen>
Date: 11 Aug 1998 12:18:58 -0400

The question of editorial credit brings forth a passionate and noble
     response from Marc Aronson, and a (predictably) more prosaic one from
     me. Editors have traditionally stood for their houses. When UN was
     editing books, she was a representative of Harper, and what she did
     made Harper what it was/is. As Marc points out, it takes a village to
     raise a book, and the traditional idea is that the house publishes the
     author, not the editor.
     
     UN was able to create Harper in her own image. As Fran Manushkin
     points out, children's book publishing was a fledgling industry in
     Nordstrom's time, so UN had the freedom to do that. Small, independent
     publishers still derive their style from a single editorial vision.
     Large corporations often maintain more than one imprint so that
     different editorial styles can be represented. And nowadays,
     publishers often carve out "imprints" for visionary editor such as
     Dick Jackson or Michael DiCapua or Margaret McElderry, over which that
     editor has full sway.
     
     Brenda Bowen
     Simon & Schuster
Received on Tue 11 Aug 1998 11:18:58 AM CDT