Japanese Writer Reveals Bizarre Case of an Editor Who Didn’t Read His Manuscript
The discussion surrounding problems in Japan’s publishing industry gained a new chapter after writer Minetoshi Yasuda spoke about the relationship between authors and editors.
For him, working on a book with an editor who doesn’t actually follow the manuscript can have such a terrible cost-benefit ratio that, in some situations, the author may be better off publishing the book themselves through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.
The statement came after Masakatsu Tsujita posted about the difficulties of making a living exclusively from books. The author questioned whether the future might be less about “living off books” and more about using books as the core of other professional activities.
That was the context in which Yasuda shared a particularly bad experience with how some publishing houses operate.
The Editor Would Only Reply “Received” to Manuscripts
Minetoshi Yasuda is the author of a novel called End of Scarlet 8964 Returns, which began its physical publication this year. The story follows Shohei, an ordinary employee who survives a massive cyberattack in Japan. After saving the spy Ice, who had secretly been watching him, he discovers that the terrorist behind the chaos is the man who murdered his parents.
In response to the discussion, Minetoshi Yasuda explained that there is a complicated reality behind publishing:
“Making a book with someone who isn’t an excellent editor has a bad cost-benefit ratio.”
Yasuda revealed that, in a case he now considers firmly in the past, he would send his manuscripts to an editor and almost always receive the same response:
“Received.”
The problem was that the editor would make absolutely no comments about the content.
Nothing about the chapter.
No observations. No suggestions. No corrections.
So Yasuda decided to find out whether the editor was actually reading the material.
He Put “あああ” in the Middle of the Manuscript
The writer explained that, at one point, he sent Chapter 4 with a deliberate change. Instead of a normal passage, he simply inserted:
“あああ”
In other words, the equivalent of typing “aaaa” in the middle of the manuscript.
The editor’s response?
“Received.”
The exact same “received/checked” response as always.
Even more surprisingly, Yasuda waited two weeks after that and still received no other message regarding the chapter’s content.
That was when he decided to confront the editor:
“What exactly did you check?”
Yasuda later explained that the important part was precisely the fact that he waited two weeks after receiving the confirmation. To him, that period served as confirmation that the manuscript’s contents had genuinely not been read.
And This Happened at a Major Publishing House!
The story could have been dismissed as an isolated experience, but Yasuda revealed another detail that made the episode even more surprising.
According to him, this happened at a fairly large publishing house, at a point when he was no longer a beginner writer.
After realizing that something was seriously wrong, Yasuda also heard accounts from the editor’s colleagues and outside writers. According to him, those conversations revealed even more problems involving the professional.
Even so, circumstances at the time prevented an easy solution. Yasuda explained that he couldn’t change editors or withdraw the manuscript.
In other words, he had basically fallen into an “editor gacha” and couldn’t simply hit the reset button.
That is why he made a point of clarifying that he considers the episode an extremely specific case. He said he does not intend to repeat this kind of situation and recommended that other authors avoid doing the same.
“The Editor Is Giving Up the Privilege of Being the First Reader”
The story quickly caught the attention of other people in the publishing industry. One commenter was particularly shocked that a book editor could be responsible for a book while barely reading the manuscript.
If the editor hasn’t read the work, how can they properly participate in the decision to sell it? But there is also a more interesting dimension to the issue.
Read more: An editor has the privilege of being one of the first people to read a work before the public. For someone who genuinely loves books, that should be one of the most exciting parts of the job.
In Yasuda’s case, however, that privilege apparently became nothing more than a bureaucratic step.
Another Story Involves More Than 200 Errors in an Award-Winning Novel
The discussion became even more interesting when another user shared an old experience. They said that a novel produced by a colleague at a publishing house reached bookstores with more than 200 typographical errors.
When they opened the novel at a bookstore, they immediately found an error on the very page they happened to open.
The conclusion was unavoidable:
“Ah, he didn’t read the manuscript.”
But there was a twist.
The book ended up winning the Kodansha Non-Fiction Award that same year, one of the major recognitions in the field… so did nobody read it? Is that really what happened? Are nobody reading the light novels being published and simply putting them out blindly, hoping one of them sells really well?
The case also involved legendary journalist and writer Takashi Tachibana, who left a blunt statement in his judging comments:
“Publishers must not look down on readers.”