Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
I won't argue that you and Diap are right--we, the buyers, are viewing some percentage of the book upfront, and we have an opportunity to at least tell if it's been proofed, by and large. Edited, though--the cutting of fat, the tightening--we likely don't know that until it's too late. {shrug}
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An irony is that it's most likely at the ends of the spectrum. The tyro writer and the madly successful, huge fan following, presold author are both prone to this. We've all run across the "too big to edit" syndrome, even to Stephen King and J.K. Rowling and so forth. Nothing's going to hurt their sales and I even suspect that there's a large element in the fan base that thinks that more is always better, i.e., they'd prefer a shapeless 600 page mass to a tightly crafted 400 page book.