Post CAN be empty!!
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Well, from time to time, they are as badly edited (which is to say, there is every impression of a publisher who does not employ an editor to assist the author). But by and large they are not a hard read (badly edited sentences aside) - especially as many are aimed at a YA market.
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The most depressing part for me about the Trump administration, is that while the entire thing is a con operation, it’s so shabby and shitty that it has become more about convincing the base that everyone else is as corrupt and inept as they are, rather than that they are better, smarter, or better-intentioned. This is the foundation of the “honesty” Trump was recently “credited” with, doing everything he can to tear down the rest of the world to his level by revealing and exaggerating the corruption around him to elevate himself by negative numbers. The con is just to convince people that the world is shit, and people are shit, so you might as well have king shitlord rule you.
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Do people really think that professional writers don’t ever make mistakes and pump out all their work error free on the first try? Because that’s not how writing works… at all. Any of us who write for a living or as part of our career are aware of this.
I do wonder if publishers are doing less editing now a days? I know that seems to be the case with some academic publishers, at least.
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That is the devil’s con. No offense meant to Satanists.
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Well good fortune we in Portland don’t get our water from the Columbia, so we’ll keep drinkin.
However I can only imagine how fast salmon populations will disappear 
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Well, I certainly know how iterative a process writing can be, and good writing even more so. I’ve edited a lot of sales/marketing/business/technical works, and have an instinct for a sentence that can be better. ‘Crafting a sentence’ mean just that. Any author whose work makes me stop mid-paragraph because of typos, bad grammar, clumsiness, or just a sentence that somehow jars - killing the flow, slicing through the suspension of disbelief, evaporating the images in my mind - needs more craft, or a ‘fresh eyes’ editor to provide support and encourage more crafting. Cory’s work occasionally gives the impression of eschewing any such input.
ETA, and not that Cory qualifies at all, but these shitheads eroding the ‘deep state’ mostly cannot write a coherent sentence to save their lives. It’s often a good giveaway (as if one were needed).
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It might also be because of less editing on the side of the publisher, too. @doctorow might be able to shed light on that. Since my only experience with publishing has been on a blog (not my own, but in my field), and for a journal, I don’t know about publishing with a popular press. I know a little more about publishing with an academic press, since I’ve known enough people who have published with one of those.
I’d also argue that few writers write by themselves, as you note it’s iterative, but it also helps to have others read your work, because no matter how good a writer you are, you’re going to miss something.
And they probably believe that they’re good writers, too.
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The executives have resented the specialists since the business hierarchy stopped working top down. Toffler wrote about it in Future Shock in 1970. Corporations needed to rely on specialists (who have no time to explain everything to everyone) in order to survive. This resentment might be another reason you don’t elect a president who promises to run a country like a corporation. The fact that Trump and the far right resent specialists just shows you what control freak, dinosaurs they are. I’m looking forward to reading Lewis’ book.
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Well that’s certainly possible. But wouldn’t a sensible author demand some editing input? Or arrange other ‘fresh eyes’? I have trouble believing that some - any - review of his drafts wouldn’t spot some of the more egregious examples. And it’s not as if he hasn’t had feedback about it.
Anyway, enough, too off-topic.
But yes the shitheads almost do believe they’re good writers. It’s Dunning-Kruger all the way down.
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Nah, they just become Blinky. All hail Mr. Burns!
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The first step of many cons isn’t to convince the mark that there is no con. It is to convince the mark that he is part of it.
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I’ve seen that resentment become more pronounced over the past 15 years, as every business became a tech business and technophobic older executives were forced to listen to young IT people and accede to the perks they demaned if they wanted their companies to survive. It’s slowly changing as the Boomer generation releases its death grip on senior executive positions, but it’ll take another decade before it reverts to the cold war that Toffler observed.
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Exactly. That’s why greedy people are a grifter’s favourite kind of mark.
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Editors cost money, and the margins on publishing these days are thin enough that many publishing houses are overworking the editors they bothered to keep. I get to hear about it a lot from my FiL, who used to work in said industry.
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Sure, but they may not be able to get it, especially if they aren’t part of the elite writing set with a lot of political capital backing them up. I can’t say this for sure, but I’m guessing that inhouse editing is one place some publishers have cut corners in recent years to make themselves more profitable. But this is all speculation on my part, of course.
[ETA] Looks like @MadLibrarian has confirmed at least some of what I’ve argued here…
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No idea why I wrote 'almost '. I meant ‘always’.
(See? Editors always needed.) 
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Roger that!
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See ‘Columbia south shore water field’ it’s Portland’s backup water source.
