Thinking Fiction: What Novels Do Fiction Editors Read?

by Carolyn Haley

In follow-up to my survey about what editors in general read for recreation (What Do Editors Read?, I invited fiction editors to share their Top 10 favorite novels, along with something about their background and experience.

Thirty-two editors responded, comprising freelancers plus one cluster of staff and contract editors for a single romance publisher. No one working for a Big 5 traditional publisher participated, giving unbalanced results. However, I wasn’t attempting a rigidly scientific survey of the total editorial population. As with my first survey, I just wanted to satisfy my curiosity about what other editors read, and to share their recommendations for our collective enjoyment. The complete list, owing to length, is posted separately from this essay on the file downloads page at wordsnSync as “What Fiction Editors Read: List of Titles”.

Note that not every responding editor answered every question in the survey; or sometimes they combined answers, or gave more or fewer titles when I asked for ten, and so forth. Thus in this essay I cannot always give “X out of 32” results for a given topic. Since I was looking for patterns rather than conducting a true statistical analysis, I took the liberty of rounding numbers up or down or otherwise generalizing in cases where deviations occurred.

Common denominators

It comes as no surprise to learn that fiction editors read a lot of fiction. What is surprising is how many novels they find time to read. While one editor reports only reading fiction for work, the rest read anywhere from two to sixty (!) novels per month for recreation. Most of them also read short fiction, poetry, blogs, magazines, news media, and nonfiction of all types.

Such heavy reading is somewhat understandable, in that almost half the responders work part time. For them, as with the two retirees, more opportunity for leisure reading is theoretically available. But we can’t draw a blanket conclusion from that, because in several cases the responders edit part time and do something else for the balance of full-time employment—and of course they have the obligations and complexities of a personal life (details of which were not addressed in the survey).

The survey asked broad questions about occupation, education, writing background, and reading habits, to see what other commonalities might exist. The primary criterion for participation was that at least two-thirds of their professional editing work be fiction. In this everyone qualified. There were no other 100% matches, though several predominant features emerged. For instance, all but one responder is female. Three-quarters of the responders are older than forty, and of these, most are in their fifties and sixties. The full age span is twenty-eight to seventy-eight.

Twenty-five responders come from the United States, five from Canada, and one each from the United Kingdom and Australia. Approximately two-thirds of the group have college degrees, of which twelve are in English or a closely related subject. Seven of the thirty-two have a certificate of some sort in editing.

In years of experience, approximately half the responders have been editing professionally for ten years or less and the other half for longer. Six have more than twenty years of experience, and one has more than forty. Most have worked in fiction the bulk of their careers, focusing on novels but also accepting novellas, short stories, and flash fiction (super-short stories), along with assorted nonfiction.

A majority of the responders work with indie authors as their main clients, with a few also working with publishers and packagers. All but one report that they offer multiple types of editing and associated services (the exception being a dedicated developmental editor). Twenty-six of the editors are writers themselves, and almost two-thirds of them have published. Only one-third, however, has published in fiction.

Reading tastes

As readers, the responding fiction editors like darn near everything, with literary, crime, and historical novels dominating. But many of the responding editors enjoy romance and young adult novels, as well as science fiction, fantasy, and eclectic other. The editors read in all formats, with almost two-thirds liking a mix of print, ebook, and audiobook compared to those who prefer print only. One editor has moved entirely away from print, preferring to get her stories via ebooks and audiobooks.

Series

Many of the editors favor series or complete bodies of work by a given author. These responses skewed the results, because among the total consolidated list of 263 novels, not all are unique titles but rather representative titles of a series, or just the series name, or “all works” by an individual. Ninety-four—just over one-third—of all editor responses mentioned part or all of a series. Frequently, responders listed single titles that are part of a series, but they didn’t list the entire series (the rest I uncovered during a title/author spelling check online). I suspect that in many of those cases the responder read all volumes in the series and simply didn’t say so.

Specifics of series titles are shown on the complete list. Below are the series names that came up, and the number of times beyond one that they were mentioned, followed by the shorter list of favorite bodies of work by a given author.

Favored series:

• A Wrinkle in Time series (2), Madeleine L’Engle
• Adam Dagliesh series, P. D. James
• All Souls trilogy, Deborah Harkness
• Amelia Peabody series, Elizabeth Peters
• Anita Blank, Vampire Hunter series, Laurell K. Hamilton
• Atticus Kodiak series, Greg Rucka
• Austenland series, Shannon Hale
• Cairo series, Naguib Mahfouz
• Checquy Files series, Daniel O’Malley
• Chicago Star series, Susan Elizabeth Phillips
• Chronicles of Ixia, Maria V. Snyder
• CIA Spies series, Linda Howard
• Colorado Trust series, Stacey Joy Netzel
• Cowboy-Fiancé series, Donna Michaels
• Culture series, Iain M. Banks
• Dempsey series, Jennifer Crusie
• Detective Inspector Chen, Liz Williams
• Discworld series (2), Terry Pratchett
• Dragonriders of Pern series, Anne McCaffrey
• Dresden Files series (2), Jim Butcher
• Drumberley series, D. E. Stevenson
• Ender series, Orson Scott Card
• Fever series, Karen Marie Moning
• Gallaghers of Ardmore series, Nora Roberts
• Hainish Cycle series, Ursula K Le Guin
• Haitian Revolutionary series, Madison Smartt Bell
• Harry Potter series (4), J. K. Rowling
• Hazelwood High series, Sharon M. Draper
• Heartbreaker Bay series, Jill Shalvis
• Heralds of Valdemar series (2), Mercedes Lackey
• Hidden Wolves series, Kaje Harper
• Immortals After Dark series, Kresley Cole
• In Death series, J. D. Robb (Nora Roberts)
• Irin Chronicles series, Elizabeth Hunter
• Italy Intrigue series, Stacey Joy Netzel
• I-Team series, Pamela Clare
• Jack Reacher series, Lee Child
• Juliette Chronicles, Tahereh Mafi
• Kirsten Lavransdatter trilogy, Sigrid Undset
• Law of Moses series, Amy Harmon
• Leaphorn and Chee Navajo police series, Tony Hillerman
• Life Lessons series, Kaje Harper
• Little House series, Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Lives of the Mayfair Witches series, Anne Rice
• Lizzy & Diesel series, Janet Evanovich
• Logan Family Saga series, Mildred D. Taylor
• Lord Peter Wimsey series, Dorothy L. Sayers
• Lords of Misrule series, Andy Graham
• Manawaka series, Margaret Laurence
• Marrying Stone series, Pamela Morsi
• Maze Runner series, James Dashner
• Midnight in Austenland, Shannon Hale
• Midwife Mystery series, Sam Thomas
• Millennium series, Steig Larsson
• Outlander series (3), Diana Gabaldon
• Plainsong series, Kent Haruf
• Regeneration series, Pat Barker
• Riftwar series, Raymond Feist
• Riyria Revelations series, Michael J. Sullivan
• Shannara series, Terry Brooks
• Silo series, Hugh Howey
• Sinner’s Grove series, A. B. Michaels
• Song of Ice and Fire series, George R. R. Martin
• Species Imperative trilogy, Julie Czerneda
• Starbridge series, Susan Howatch
• Starcatchers series, Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
• Stephanie Plum series, Janet Evanovich
• Sword of Truth series, Terry Goodkind
• The Black Dagger Brotherhood series (2), J. R. Ward
• The Black Stallion series, Walter Farley
• The Bourne trilogy , Robert Ludlum
• The Bronze Horseman series, Paullina Simons
• The Cat Who series, Lillian Jackson Braun
• The Chalion series, Lois McMaster Bujold
• The Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis
• The Deed of Paksennarion series, Elizabeth Moon
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide series (2), Douglas Adams
• The Hunger Games series (2), Suzanne Collins
• The Lace Reader series, Brunonia Barry
• The Lord of the Rings series (2), J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Pillars of the Earth series, Ken Follett
• The Raven Cycle series, Maggie Stiefvater
• The Sandman series, Neil Gaiman
• Thessaly series, Jo Walton
• Tillerman Cycle series (2), Cynthia Voigt
• Vampire Chronicles series, Anne Rice
• Vorkosigan saga, Lois McMaster Bujold
• Wolf Hall series, Hilary Mantel

Favored author bodies of work:

• Clive Cussler
• Harlan Coben
• John Grisham
• Lawrence Block
• Lee Child
• Nora Roberts
• Sandra Brown (mysteries only)

Works such as J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia were sometimes listed as standalone titles and other times as series. I’ve included them under the series listing because most people who read them read all volumes.

Duplicate titles

In the main, responders mentioned individual titles. The list below shows novels mentioned by two or more responders (with the number in parentheses indicating how many more than two).

• Beloved, Toni Morrison
• Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Disgrace, J. M. Coetzee (3)
• Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
• Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy
• One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (6)
• Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier
• The Dispossessed, Ursula K Le Guin
• The Fellowship of the Ring, J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
• The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin
• The Living, Annie Dillard
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Duplicate authors

Individual authors were mentioned by multiple responders in conjunction with different titles. There were instances where a responder listed different titles by the same author on their own list, and also a few cases where one responder mentioned a specific title and a second responder mentioned “all works” by the same author or a series. The list below, however, only includes authors mentioned by different responders, specifying different titles.

• Barbara Kingsolver
• Charles Dickens
• Cormac McCarthy
• C. S. Lewis
• Daphne Du Maurier
• Haruki Murakami
• Jane Austen
• Jodi Picoult
• John Steinbeck
• J. R. R. Tolkien
• Linda Howard
• Madeleine L’Engle
• Margaret Atwood
• Thomas Hardy
• Toni Morrison
• Ursula Le Guin
• Virginia Woolf

Oddballs and exceptions

Not every responder understood the directions in the questionnaire, or else rushed through it and missed a request. For instance, I asked exclusively for novels, but two responders included memoirs and one included a nonfiction title. Although I’ve included these titles on the complete list, I do not include them in the full count.

Likewise, the request for “your favorite novelist” was commonly ignored, or people just couldn’t answer because they had so many (with one responder saying, “You’re kidding, right?”). Among those who did answer, or listed multiple authors, there was erratic correlation between favorite authors and those on the individual’s Top 10 list. Favorite authors mentioned are shown below (with the number in parentheses indicating how many times more than once their names came up).

• Anne McCaffrey
• Anne Rice
• Bess Streeter Aldrich
• Beverly Nault
• Charles Dickens
• Connie Willis
• Cormac McCarthy
• D. E. Stevenson
• Dean Koontz
• Diana Gabaldon (2)
• Dick Francis
• Donna Tartt
• Dorothy Sayers
• Douglas Adams
• Drayton Mayrant
• Eliot Baker
• Elizabeth Cadell
• Elizabeth Moon
• Fyodor Dostoevsky
• George R. R. Martin
• Georgette Heyer
• Helen MacInnes
• J. R. R. Tolkien
• J. K. Rowling
• James Patterson
• Jane Austen (2)
• Janet Evanovich
• J. D. Ward
• Jodi Picoult
• Jonathan Franzen
• Joseph C. Lincoln
• Judy Ann Davis
• Karen Marie Moning
• Laurel Hamilton
• Linda Howard
• Lois McMaster Bujold
• Louise Erdrich
• Madeleine L’Engle
• Maeve Binchy
• Markus Zusak
• Mary Balogh
• Nevada Barr (2)
• Nora Roberts (2)
• P. D. James
• Patricia Cornwall
• Peter Carey
• Peter Mayle
• Rita Bay
• Ruth Rendell
• Sam Thomas
• Sigrid Undset
• Terry Brooks
• Thomas Hardy
• Tony Hillerman

Survey overlaps

While processing the fiction editors’ questionnaires, I looked for overlaps with my first survey, even though it’s an apples-and-oranges comparison. The first survey involved thirteen nonfiction-dominant editors, while this one involved thirty-two fiction-dominant editors. Nevertheless, their tastes crossed thirteen times for specific titles and seventeen times for authors (meaning, different books by the same author mentioned twice or more). Most of these titles and authors can be considered “literary” and/or “classic.”

Title overlaps:

• The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
• The Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis
• Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
• The Lord of the Rings series, J. R. R. Tolkien
• Persuasion, Jane Austen
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
• The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
• The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold
• The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
• Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
• Discworld series, Terry Pratchett
• The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin

Author overlaps:

• Jane Austen
• Charles Dickens
• Charlotte Brontë
• Connie Willis
• David Mitchell
• Dick Francis
• Edith Wharton
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Ian McEwan
• John Fowles
• J. R. R. Tolkien
• Margaret Atwood
• Michael J. Sullivan
• Sarah Waters
• Terry Pratchett
• Umberto Eco
• Virginia Woolf

Conclusions

Putting it all together, I observed three superstars—Jane Austen, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis—whose names came up multiple times no matter what criterion I used to view and sort the reading lists of the fiction and nonfiction editors I surveyed, separately or combined. Another standout was Terry Pratchett, whose enormous Discworld series appealed to editors of both types.

While I was not surprised to see these and many other familiar names on so many people’s lists, I was surprised to see who didn’t appear. Agatha Christie, for example. She is considered one of — if not the — top-selling novelists of all time, yet none of the fiction responders in my survey mentioned her. She did, however, appear once on the nonfiction editors’ list (also on my own list, which was appended to that essay but not counted in the results).

Among the fiction editors, there seems to be a gap between classic and contemporary works that leaves many vintage mega-sellers behind, such as Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey, Jackie Collins and Barbara Cartland, Harold Robbins and Sidney Sheldon, Georges Simenon and Erle Stanley Gardner, and many others, all of whom were hugely popular in their day. Also notably absent is household name Stephen King (who did, unexpectedly, appear on one nonfiction editor’s literary-biased list). But J. K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame had a strong presence, even though that series was marketed for young adults, whereas Danielle Steele, still writing prolifically with an enormous fan base, wasn’t mentioned even by the editors who gobble up romance and women’s fiction.

What I found to be significant among all the editors surveyed was how widely their tastes range. See for yourself the complete fiction editors list here: “What Fiction Editors Read: List of Titles”.

Postscript: Apparently I’m not the only one doing this type of survey. For a literary take, see “The Most Important Books of the Last Twenty Years”. A handful of titles and authors on this list overlap both my surveys.

Carolyn Haley, an award-winning novelist, lives and breathes novels. Although specializing in fiction, she edits across the publishing spectrum — fiction and nonfiction, corporate and indie — and is the author of two novels and a nonfiction book. She has been editing professionally since 1977, and has had her own editorial services company, DocuMania, since 2005. She can be reached at dcma@vermontel.com or through her websites, DocuMania and New Ways to See the World. Carolyn also blogs at Adventures in Zone 3 and reviews at New York Journal of Books.