"Authors should, and usually do, appreciate the fact that one of the editor's most crucial challenges is to be able to articulate, clearly and appealingly, the signal virtues of a given book.  From editorial reports on through catalog copy, jacket flaps, and publicity releases, it is the editor's initial core descriptions that implicitly explain why the book has been chosen in the first place and explicitly set the tone for how a book will be perceived both in and out of the house....

"...the role of editors, like everything else, is bound to change.  Corporate pressures for economies in overhead and benefits are likely to lead to more outside free-lance editing and diminished house staffs.  It's a toss-up question as to whether more or less editing in general will be needed.  On the one hand, entropic degeneration of the language, diminished devotion to accuracy, and word processor bloat all cry out for increased editorial ministrations.  On the other hand, the legions crying "Who cares?" show no signs of fading away either."

~Alan D. Williams (Two decades at Viking Press among other editorial positions) Editors on Editing, edited by Gerald Gross, 1993