Well, there's a lot of things going on here.
Donaldson - it has to be admitted - is an over-writer. Earlier in his career, publishers demanded a lot of hard editing from Donaldson. And, as far as I can tell, this has generally been a positive thing when looking at the result. But I believe that, at one point, Lester del Rey needed a dedicated editor
just for Donaldson's work.
Over the years, the publishing industry changed. Publishers don't provide the editing services the way that they used to. Donaldson's third Chronicles was allowed to stretch to four books, whereas the second Chronicles, also written as four books, was trimmed back to three. I am sure Donaldson was allowed some artistic license in order to finish his magnum opus. But I think also that industry changes played a part. And to be sure the result was, to many people's thinking, a bit over-long and over-explained.
In the Gradual Interview, Stephen R Donaldson wrote:For a number of reasons, several of which involve the changes in the publishing industry over the past 20-30 years. Back in the days when Lester del Rey gave me my "break," editors still read unsolicited manuscripts (the "slush pile," manuscripts submitted "over the transom"). But what I call the conglomoratization of modern publishing has put huge pressures on publishers, forcing them to change the way they do business. The vast and faceless corporations which now own virtually all of US publishering don't give a damn about books, or authors, or (God forbid) literature. They care about bucks. And they demand profits from their subsidiaries (only some of which are publishers) on a scale previously unknown in publishing. This has had two primary effects: 1) publishers are under tremendous pressure to produce bestsellers, and only bestsellers; and 2) publishers have been forced to dramatically reduce their costs of doing business. One result is that, as a general rule, the average editor today is doing the work that three editors did ten years ago, and five twenty years ago. (There are other results, but they aren't relevant at the moment.) He/she can't afford to put much time into editing; and he/she certainly can't afford to read unsolicited manuscripts. Therefore much of the work that editors used to do has been transferred to agents. An editor simply won't read a manuscript that doesn't come from an agent; and the agent had damn well better do a fair amount of editing before he ever shows the manuscript to an editor.
(07/30/2004)
The Great Gods War is now where Donaldson's over-writing style is hitting hard up against a publishing industry wherein Donaldson is no longer a big-name author. The story needs to be trimmed back. But the publishers don't lend a hand in this any more - they just send it back and ask for 100K less words.
So what I am trying to say here is that this really isn't something new, and it's not necessarily bad. The only thing that's really new is the way it's unfolding.
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