Our editors are all either:
A) Experienced editors from major publishing houses; or B) Experienced authors.
We make extensive use of professional authors, for the same reason that carpenters are usually the best people to teach carpentry: this is a practical task, and you’ll often get the best advice from hands-on, working practitioners.
That said, we also use well-qualified editors from publishing houses, but only those with a real passion for the task of editing itself. (Although the job title is ‘editor’, in practice the role covers management of the entire publication process from acquisition to production to marketing.)
As a very broad guide, authors often make the best editors for newer writers (where the practitioner-type advice is most important) and publisher-editors often make the best editors for later stage writers (where knowledge of the publishing market becomes more relevant.) But that’s a broad rule only. We allocate manuscripts to editors based on genre, author, specific editorial issues, an editor’s specific experience and passions, and so on. It’s our job to find the right editor for you.
We don’t use any editor who doesn’t meet our standards, and we check every editorial report before it goes out to the client. We aim to be the best and work hard to make sure we live up to that aim.