Publishing friendships

The other day a friend of mine texted me saying she wished there was someone on her team (amongst her agents and editors, publicists, etc) that she was friends with. Like, especially in her end of the commercial fiction pond, there’s a cult of galpalhood, where authors perform how close they are with their editors or agents. They’ll write about calling up their agent late at night, pitching a book based on a show they just watched, or talk about going to drinks with their editor, laughing about publishing gossip, etc. She felt a little bad that her relationships with her team were strictly business.

It is a bit odd. You work with someone for years, sometimes, but you really only communicate with them by sporadic emails. And you have a lot invested, on an emotional level, in their opinion. You desperately want their approval, and they in turn need you to trust their opinion. But the nature of the relationship creates a certain wariness: when we pitch books to them, I can’t help thinking agents and editors must have a certain dread. Sometimes books really don’t pitch well, and they need to tell you the idea looks dubious. But even if the book does pitch well, they can’t be too enthusiastic, because it’s possible that when they read the full manuscript, they simply won’t like it.