I feel a need to address one of your takeaways: the final one, simply because the priorities you express there bother me a bit.

I know a lot of writers who have successfully sold novels or short stories, and none of them ever paid an editor to go through their work beforehand. They either did the editing themselves and/or got someone or several someones knowledgeable about writing to read the work and give them markups and feedback.

I do not have a problem in principle with paying someone a reasonable rate to proofread or even critique something one has written — and it makes sense to some degree if you intend to self-publish, although it can be a bit of a gamble as to whether or not you’ll ever make back what you spent — but I’ve never paid to be edited, and I feel there is a misconception being propagated out there that “it’s what everyone does!” And that ain’t so.

My two cents, unasked for, offered freely nonetheless.

I think the thing I learned the most is the importance of a newsletter from Brooke McGlothlin.

Another interesting point, brought up by a young woman in the audience of the panel discussion, is that the laments and wails about the imminent death of “traditional” publishing mask another phenomena: the tools that make publishing possible have been and continue to be democratized as they undergo this transformation. The point was made that New York is becoming less essential to the publishing industry, and that the new technology available decentralizes publishing. But it’s a work in progress. Sure, I can publish a book through lulu.com, but it won’t reach anyone without some individual or institution that knows how to market a book, so book marketing and PR technologies–if such things exist–need to be disseminated into user-friendly packages. I don’t know when that is going to happen in any meaningful way.