In the world of publishing, the role of an editor is to check what the author has written. The job is often crucial because an editor can often spot and correct errors in the text or clarify incoherent passages that the writer has been too absorbed to notice in their story.
Sometimes this working relationship between a writer and an editor can be quite a tussle, with both sides wanting to 'win' for the benefit of the finished book.
Holly Webb, the British author of young children's stories - including The Snow Bear, My Naughty Little Puppy, A Cat called Penguin and The Frightened Kitten - knows all about such conflicts because she once worked as the editor of children's novels, too.
The mother of three boys, who was a guest speaker at last month's Hong Kong Book Fair, says: 'I used to work, for about seven or eight years, as an editor for a children's publisher.'
The publisher was looking for writers who could produce a series of stories for young girls.
Webb, part of the team expected to make the final choices, had already thought of some possible characters, and their pets, for some stories. So, without telling anyone, she began to write her own novels.
