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Originally Posted by VydorScope
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Thanks for sharing the Goodreads link. I have abandoned 3 of 5 top abandoned, but not for any of the reasons cited.
Wicked I read years before the musical. And the last one left (Casual Vacancy) is still on my TBR, although I'm not expecting a HP repeat.
Quote:
Originally Posted by VydorScope
Notice that very few people in this survey put a book down due to bad editing for example, yet that is one of the things most authors seem to scream about in their advice, "make sure its professionally edited" and etc.
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As someone who worked in publishing (and now television), I've read a lot of slush pile, and its usually ugly. The problem with editing in any medium is that the best editing is invisible. The reader/viewer never knows what the original looked like before an editor touched it.
I think this is most obvious when a big name genre author switches editors, for whatever reason. When the next editor works on their work, it is rarely as good, because the new editor usually has a case of Author Awe and doesn't edit as effectively/ruthlessly as the editor who was there from the beginning. Early fans complain that the author has jumped the shark, but odds are the writer was always this weak - their first editor pushed it beyond those weaknesses.
From a reader standpoint, I've recently noticed that the my favorite books usually end with an author giving lengthy, detailed thanks to their early readers and editor for helping them read and edit the book to its current state.
Maybe I'll start skipping to the acknowledgements before I start reading.
In terms of what makes me abandon a book, for fiction, it's when the story stretches credulity past my breaking point (which is different for different genres). For non-fiction, if the book is misrepresented, or I don't trust the author's research.