From The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers, by Betsy Lerner:

It’s easy to forget, in this ultra-accelerated culture of ours, where even fusty book publishing is caught up in the national fervor for celebrity and where the value of all things is equated with their dollar value, that what most editors truly want is good books. No matter how much it may seem otherwise, no matter how many mediocre or just plain bad books get fed into the great machine, most of us are in awe of a brilliant manuscript and will do everything in our power to see that it reaches readers . . . [E]ditors are . . . the world’s readers. And thus the eyes of the world.