It's worth remembering/considering that your editor is also the advocate for you/your book. Authors tend to think of their editor/publisher as one entity. Ideally it should be one cohesive team behind your book, but that just isn't always the case. I daresay rarely, in fact.

Editors aren't interchangeable mechanisms, and not just creatively or from an editing-your-book standpoint. Who your editor is and how they feel about you/your book absolutely matters in terms of how much attention/resources/push you receive from your publisher as a whole.

There is a reason agents carefully select/target specific editors at a publisher when sending your manuscript out. It's not and shouldn't be IMHO just about who will like your book. You want an editor who can and will fight for your book within the publishing house/company.

Having a brilliant book that is edited equally brilliantly, and even packaged brilliantly, is often worth beans if your publisher as a whole--management, marketing, et all--isn't behind your book or allocating resources to letting people know it is being published.

Editors can't move mountains, and I want to reiterate I feel it should not be this way, but there will or may absolutely be times when the publisher is only making moves on behalf of your book because your editor is fighting for it. And they may never tell you that.

There have been several points in my career when I thought, "Gee, I have a great publisher who loves me" when the truth is I had a great editor who was fighting for every gain our project made within an otherwise indifferent publishing structure.

It took me many years and many books and working with many different kinds of publishers and editors to realize your editor plays that advocate role, how deep it goes, and how absolutely vital and make or break that role can be for your book. It is kind of everything.

If you are fortunate enough to have an agent, and have an editor or editors making offers on your book, I really believe it is worth having a conversation beyond the numbers of the deal about what kind of advocate your editor is or will NEED to be with that publisher.

I can't speak directly to the experience, but I do have to imagine (and have talked to many friends who've gone through it) that editor-as-advocate matters a million times more when you're an author from a marginalized group as well. Making it over the wall is just the beginning.

Anyway. This is a thing I really wish I'd known earlier in my career, and it is one of many things we don't talk about enough. There are deals I've made, reasonably big deals, that I would have reconsidered entirely if I'd known to look at them from these angles.

Money is important. Rights are important. But you definitely need to consider the state and landscape of the publisher offering you the deal, how you'll fit into it, and the role/position of the editor who wants your book within that publisher.

Publishers are also wildly varied environs. There are BIG publishers you'll hear an author say are garbage who are treating them terribly and it's absolutely true, and other authors have best-sellers at the same pub at the same time and LOVE that pub and they're not wrong either.

I could go on all day, but you get the central point. Just add that to your toolbox fwiw. Seriously, this is on my top five list of Things I Wish I'd Known At the Beginning of My Career.