THERE IS MORE AND MORE TALK THESE DAYS that books are not edited the way they were; that acquiring editors at the big publishing houses are too busy; too focused on acquisition and the search for the hot subject or author, to do the painstaking line work and reshaping many authors need; and that agents are increasingly being asked to deliver manuscripts that are as close as possible to being ready to go straight into production.

The solution to all these problems besetting an industry expected to get out as many books as ever, with far fewer people than it employed a generation or more ago?

The freelance editor, consulting editor, independent editor, book doctor--call him (or more frequently her) what you will--seems to be the principal answer, and, fortunately for the future flow of books, there are plenty of them out there.

Not all of them became freelancers willingly. In some cases they, were let go in changes of ownership, as part of economy drives to get rid of higher-paid editors and replace them with keen youngsters who would work for much less (but also knew much less). Sometimes they got tired of the corporate world and split of their own accord for a life where they were answerable to no one but themselves. Some were retired, as they saw it prematurely.

Without exception, however, of the more than two dozen PW has talked to in recent months in preparation for this article, none regret the move, or hanker for other than a few aspects of the old life: a regular, reliable paycheck is about the only thing they can all agree on missing, though collegiality is another comfort lacked by the solitary worker at home. Although the independent editors, almost to a woman, are pleased with their independence, and are delighted to have abandoned many of the aspects of corporate life--particularly the constant meetings--they also miss the "buzz" as former Clarkson Potterite Carol Southern puts it, of having colleagues to gossip with and bounce ideas off. "One of the things you miss is that sense of community, of friends sharing a common purpose that you would get in a publishing house, admits Jim Wade, who left Crown three years ago and has established a solid freelance practice since.

To remedy such deficiencies, veteran Jerry Gross, who has been freelancing for 12 years after a publishing career that spans more than 40, got together with another publishing exile, Joyce Engelson, at the beginning of 1996 and summoned a group of similarly situated freelances to a monthly luncheon get-together, at first in Engelson's Upper Fifth Avenue apartment (Gross himself lives up the Hudson, in Croton). They called their group the Independent Editors Group, and it now numbers a round dozen and meets regularly, with a break in the summer months, at the Greenwich Village apartment of member Richard Marek.

"We chat informally, hear visiting speakers, and get work for and from each other. It's a very successful enterprise," Marek comments cheerfully. 'We recommend each other, try to avoid gossip.)' (Not very successfully; at two meetings PW attended, recent personnel moves were viewed with some skepticism, payment policies were lamented and a few horror stories were told about currently employed editors' inattention and occasional invidiousness.)

The guests--who come to meet the members, hear how they work and receive a professionally prepared list of their backgrounds and specialties have represented a wide swath of publishing folk, mostly in-house editors and agents. In the past couple of years visiting editors have included Jamie Raab and Maureen Egen of Warner, Lisa Drew at S&S, Emily Bestler at Pocket Books, Sam Vaughan at Random and John Silbersack at Harper Collins. Visiting agents have included Ernina Sweeney, Jean Naggar, Ellen Levine, Gail Hochman and Carl Brandt, Jimmy Vines, Bob Tabian, Molly Friedrich at Aaron Priest, Carol Mann, Liv Blumer at Barney Karpfinger, Vicky Bijur, Robin Rue of Writer's House and Henry Dunow.

Other visitors have been Judith Applebaum and Florence Howe of Sensible Solutions, Connie Sayre of Market Partners (whose list of freelance editors in the MP newsletter first inspired, says Gross, the idea of a Mutual support group). The day PW attended the group's April meeting, the guests were two bright young agents--Geri Thoma at the Elaine Markson agency, and Noah Lukeman--who described the kinds of books and authors they represented and the kinds of services they might require from freelance editors.

Before long, the IEG, became oversubscribed. The idea, says Jerry Gross, was deliberately to limit membership to no more than a dozen, "otherwise it becomes too unwieldy." So a year or so ago a second group, called the Consulting Editors Alliance, was set up, also meeting monthly, in Carol Southern's spacious Upper West Side apartment. The alliance also has 12 members and performs much the same function as the original: an opportunity for members to get together on a regular basis to exchange ideas, offer each other referrals and meet with key book people who can send business their way.

Where does most of the business of all these editors-for-hire--and those who are not members of either group--come from? Sally Arteseros, a 23-vear veteran Of Doubleday, says, "I do most of my work for editors, people I've known over the years." For Jim Wade, most of his clients are either authors he's worked with before or writers they recommend, and, yes, he does still get some work sent his way by people at his old alma mater, Crown. For others, work comes mostly from agents who don't have the time or in some cases the inclination or ability to do detailed editing, but recognize that a client's book needs work before it can be successfully submitted.

Some of the independents do ghostwriting and collaborations, but most don't. Some work on both fiction or nonfiction titles; nearly all have some special areas of interest or expertise. All have numbers of published books to their credit, though none of them ever guarantees that their efforts will secure agent representation or publication. They do believe, however, that their work greatly improves the odds.

The freelance editors are all aware of the kinds of abuses their role could involve, and speak with revulsion of some operations, like Edit Ink in upstate New York, whose practices, including kickbacks to recommending editors and agents, led to investigation by the state attorney general's office last year. Jerry Gross, in fact, has his own list of warning signs that should alert people to what tic calls "a scam book doctor," which he has printed up as a kind of admonitory code of ethics; he hastens to add that it is not official IEG policy', though the members would doubtless agree with its prescriptions.

Danger signals, according to Gross, include statements that a writer today cannot get published without professional help from a book doctor; a stated or implied guarantee that the editor's work on a manuscript guarantees acceptance by all agent and/or ultimate publication; a lack of assurance that he/she will edit the work personally; a lack of references from author, or agents he/she has worked with; a lack of specificity in all agreement as to the costs that will be incurred, and exactly what will be done to earn payment.

The whole question of payment, says Arteseros--and others agree with her--is the hardest thing to deal with. "It's always a problem deciding what to charge someone, she says. Like most of her colleagues, she has a sliding scale according to how much needs to be done. The author's perceived ability to pay also enters into the equation. There is no uniformity among the book doctors as to what, or how, to charge: some do so by the page, some by the hour; some quote a price up front for the entire job, others offer only an estimate. The usual practice, as with a book contract, is to receive a portion of the payment on signature of the agreement to work together, the other half on completion of the job (though not all actually work with written agreements).

Carol Southern, hostess to the Consulting Editors Alliance, is a comparative newcomer to the business, having left Clarkson Potter only a year or so ago. "I had a terrible time deciding what to ask for at first." she says. "I was definitely undercharging." On this, as in many other matters involving independent editors, Gross has unswerving notions. "You must never underestimate the value of what you do," he says. "If someone tells me they think I charge too much, or that they can have the same kind of work done more cheaply by someone else, I tell them firmly that in that case they should do so." He adds, "It's psychologically bad for you to work for less than what you feel is fair."

Marek, with the concurrence of others in his group, always asks to see a manuscript on which he is expected to work before agreeing to take it on: "There's no point in raising the hopes of someone who simply shouldn't be hoping to sell their writing." Joan Sanger, a member of the CEA, says that one of the hardest parts of an independent editor's role is "telling an author who has been sent to me that what they have written just won't work, to try and tell them, as tactfully as possible, to give it up and do something else."

Sanger, who left Putnam in the early 1980s, found that one of the advantages of her new life was that it enabled her to do something she had always wanted to do but been constrained from doing: develop new fiction authors. She now works almost exclusively on that, mostly to get her authors represented by good agents, though in some cases she works with existing agents to polish manuscripts for submission. One such was Melisse Shapiro's Lip Service, which she helped polish for agent Loretta Barrett. When the agent couldn't find a publisher at first, Shapiro published the book herself on the Internet, where it became so popular that Barrett was able to make a deal with Pocket Books, which will publish this fall.

For Arnold Dolin, another member of CEA, who until last year was senior v-p, associate publisher, at Dutton/Plume, the change of pace was also welcome, and he found himself doing things he had never done before: writing critiques of manuscripts, for example, helping authors write nonfiction proposals, even, on one remarkable occasion, introducing an author to a number of publishers, soliciting bids on his book, then agenting the highfive figure deal that resulted. I love my new life," he told PW from a rented farmhouse where he was vacationing in Tuscany. Any unpleasant surprises? "People not always returning your phone calls," he says. "That wouldn't happen in my old job."

Most of the editors found little difficulty in finding work: through the agent, editor and author contacts they had built up during their officially employed years, writers and would-be writers were soon knocking at the door. There is often a problem, however, in balancing out the work load so that it flows fairly evenly and is not a collection of urgent deadlines followed by long fallow periods. "It seems to be feast or famine," says Joan Sanger. Carol Southern, who spent much of her first year winding up work on projects still going through the publishing process at her old house, finds she can now concentrate on such favorites as spirituality, lifestyle and gardening books. She finds that "the hardest part is disciplining yourself to do the work when it has to be done. When you're at home, it's too easy to find other things to take up the time."

Then there are a handful of notable editors who are not, for whatever reason, a member of any group, but who remain actively involved in shaping new book. Roger Donald, for instance, has a loose first-refusal arrangement with his alma mater, Little, Brown, and recently steered to it a thriller by former TV actor Gardner McKay that he had edited for a Honolulu agent. But he edits books for other houses, too (and divides his time, as freelancers can do, between Brooklyn and Montana).

Then there is Corlies ("Cork") Smith, a man vastly admired by his peers, no longer with Houghton Mifflin but still active; Harvey Ginsberg, formerly of Morrow Herman Gollob, formerly of Doubleday (and about to turn author, with a book on Shakespeare); and, until his untimely death of cancer last year, Alan Williams, formerly of Viking, also widely acknowledged as one of the great ones.

Particularly in the last year or two, editors who have left corporate publishing have also moved in another direction, as agents. These include Brian DeFiore, formerly Hyperion and Villard, now in business for himself; Wendy Sherman, formerly at Holt, who has joined the Aaron Priest agency; Elaine Koster, formerly of NAL, also now her own person; Lisa Dawson of Putnam, now an agent in New Jersey; Jim Fitzgerald of St. Martin's, now at Carol Mann. The same route was taken longer ago by such industry stalwarts as Loretta Barrett, formerly of Doubleday/Anchor; Millie Marmur, formerly of Random and Scribner; and Robert DiForio, formerly of Penguin.

In fact, there are times when it seems, despite the illustrious editorial names who still decorate a handful of houses, that there is at least as much editorial talent now at work outside publishing houses as within them.

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