Desk editing is a largely hidden, often thankless role that is quietly being done by a small group of dedicated, diligent, detail-oriented people.

There are no specific industry awards for desk editors; their work is often forgotten about once a book has gone to press. So this is an ode to them, and a call to the industry to not undervalue a job that is so crucial to a successful publishing team.

(At this point, I should say that desk editors can be called a whole host of things – project editors, production editors – as publishing does like to be as opaque as possible when it comes to job titles. But I’ll be using the term desk editor as a catch-all from now on.)

Arguably the most famous desk editor is Benjamin Dreyer, who, until 2023, was copy chief and managing editor of Random House in the US. On desk editors, he said this: "What you are ultimately trying to do is help make a writer’s book into the best possible version of itself that it can be."

And that takes skill. It takes sensitivity. It takes detail. It’s about working with different personalities, different characters. It’s about keeping a book on schedule so it prints at the right time. It’s about crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s on all those niggly little things that make up a book: the images, the text permissions, the page design, the endmatter. The list goes on and on.

This is what a desk editor brings to a publishing team: a calm head, an eye for detail, a master juggler of so many different components on multiple books. Need a copyeditor who specialises in political memoir? A desk editor will know one – and they’ll have a list of previous titles they’ve worked on for reference, too.

Publishing a book with lots of third-party text? A desk editor will create a spreadsheet to track and clear them for use. What about legal reads? A desk editor will have details of those, and will know how specific points were dealt with by the author. Speaking of authors – a desk editor will learn what an author likes (a specific copy editor or proofreader, when they prefer to be emailed, the tone in which they like to be addressed) and crucially, what they don’t.

Good luck getting AI to take into consideration the level of work a manuscript needs, match a freelancer to an author and a text, then check the edit to make sure the level of changes and the tone of the feedback is appropriate

But unfortunately, desk editors are often treated as optional. In most publishing houses it is tied into the editorial assistant or assistant editor roles. Sometimes, a commissioning editor might even be in charge of their own desk editing if there is not enough resource in the team. It seems so strange for a whole job to be tacked onto the end of other job descriptions. A desk editorial pal summed it up nicely: "Having a dedicated desk editing team means assistants and editors can concentrate on editing. And that means they won’t get total burnout." Doesn’t that sound nice?

So this is my plea to the industry: desk editing should not be an afterthought. A thoughtful desk editor can turn a good book into a great one. They can make the process a great one, too, and alleviate stress and pressure on an author and editor. And just as a desk editor usually has no interest in commissioning, an assistant does not care whether all the ellipses in a book are equally spaced or if a word has been stacked four times on a proof page. And why should they? It is not what they want to do. It is not where their skills lie.

Another brilliant desk editor I know put it this way: "Desk editing means managing lots of different things: on top of the books themselves, there are personalities and approaches to work to think about from all sides. It makes it a really difficult job. I could not imagine doing this and having to assist an editor, too."

On top of this is the problem of AI, the elephant that seems to be in every room in publishing at the minute. The majority of the people I spoke to are worried that desk editorial teams are most at risk of being replaced with AI. "We’re not shiny and public-facing," one desk editor told me. "A lot of the higher ups don’t really know what we do. But they will rue the day they replace us: AI will never be able to truly anticipate the nuances of this job."

Good luck getting AI to take into consideration the level of work a manuscript needs, match a freelancer to an author and a text based on this assessment, and then check the edit to make sure the level of changes and the tone of the feedback is appropriate. Because there is no standard formula for that: it takes skill only years of desk editing can bring.

I hope that in the future, desk editors are given their dues. They are the people keeping editorial standards high. And they are crucial to making sure great books keep being published.