Have you noticed that more misprints - and factual errors - seem to be creeping into books these days? If the answer is yes, feel free to blame who you like - except the editor.

With publishers putting out ever more titles and ever bigger advances to the most marketable authors some in the publishing world fear the role of the book editor is being downgraded.

Certainly there are now far fewer than in the palmy days before congolomerates took over. Then, publishing was a profession for gentlemen.

Booker prize winner Ian McEwan: Successful despite the demise of the editor

And when the veteran publisher Lord Weidenfeld told the Frankfurt Book Fair last year that the industry was guilty of slipshod editing and an obsession with the quick buck, he seemed to open a debate that goes to the heart of the publishing world.

The agent Giles Gordon, whose clients include Peter Ackroyd, Fay Weldon and Peter Hennessy, thinks book editors are an endangered species.

"Twenty years ago editors ruled the roost. They decided which books were taken on by publishing houses and books were published accordingly."

"These days, when men, and increasingly women, in suits are running publishing houses the role of the editor has been steadily diminished and goes on being diminished," he laments.

Devil in the detail

Traditionally editors have seen books through from start to finish - including making sure there are not any misprints.

David Godwin: The editor provides that vital second eye

David Godwin, a former editor at Secker & Warburg & Jonathan Cape and now an agent, says publishers no longer have teams of people checking copy for errors. Consequently standards have dropped.

"Checking grammar, checking facts and consistency of characters in the book - all these things are virtually all freelanced and that is where there has been the fall in standards," he says.

Jonathan Cape, now part of the giant Random House group, has had a successful year, including winning the Booker Prize with Ian McEwan's Amsterdam.

Its publishing director Dan Franklin, says publishers have had to become more businesslike and there have always been moans.

"I think people have been making these complaints since the year after Caxton," he says. "Certainly my editor found exactly the same complaint about typos, and so on, in a file recently, and it was from 1910," he says.

No final chapter

But aside from spotting mistakes, editors can transform a book. It is said Lord of the Flies was turned from an average novel into a great one by a Faber editor who cut the whole of the first chapter.

Fay Weldon: The editor's input is minimal

Author Fay Weldon however does not think the value of editor can be clearly defined.

Fay Weldon: "I know what I am doing"

"I would say that they had no input whatsoever. But they would say 'don't be so stupid'. It's a question of personalities and pride and it's a very subtle thing," she explains.

But David Godwin says editors can make a huge difference: "Sometimes people think a novel is finished when it's not and I think a good critical judge, who can take the book apart, suggest changes, maybe make it shorter or longer and make it better, is very important - and these days very rare indeed."

Novelist and journalist Kate Saunders agrees. She relies heavily on her editor. But there are so few about now she says authors are editing each others' books.

"You do sometimes need someone to stand aside, take your draft, talk you through it and say this is not working. I've edited friends' books and they have made suggestions about mine in an informal way - and certainly, in a small way, authors are taking in each others' washing," she says.

Yet a glance in any bookshop shows there is no shortage of good books - and Cape's Dan Franklin totally rejects the notion that publishing is in decline.