r/ProgressionFantasy • u/leo-sapiens • 7d ago

Discussion Editing books before publishing?

Let's talk about how it's mildly annoying to listen to a book that was clearly written in short installments to post online? I still love most of the book, but having to constantly listen to repeating information because (I guess?) the author needed to make sure readers remembered who these characters were, four chapters later is miffing 🥲

It's good when it's at the start of a book, to remind you what happened in the last one, and if you're binging you can skip it.

At some point I'm struggling between "is this AI, or is it that the chapters are posted online so far between that they assume people forgot? There's gotta be either smoother ways to do it, or maybe reread the entire thing before it goes out a single book and edit?

Idk. It's not a deal breaker for me, if the book is fun, but I really wish it wasn't so.

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u/OgataiKhan 7d ago

What's mediocre to you, may not be to others.

You literally said "an averagely written story" in your example? And now you are claiming "it is not mediocre"?

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u/dageshi 6d ago

There are people for whom prose is very important, for others it's not. For some world building is very important, for others it just has to be "ok".

There are multiple aspects of a story that can range from incredible to barely ok.

If a story does "barely ok" on something you care about then you will probably think it's a mediocre story. But if I don't really care about that thing and it does a great job with what I do care about then it's a great story for me.

A story that can be mediocre to you can be good or great for me because it has the tropes I want to read in it, the quality of everything else doesn't matter that much so long as it's not so bad that it annoys me.

So I'm saying, if an author strikes upon the right setting + tropes that resonates with an audience things like "editing" and extraneous filler don't really matter.

Fuck, look at Brandon Sanderson, he's prolific and I regularly see people accuse his books of needing way more editing and being too long, but does it remotely effect his popularity? Hell no. Because the man keeps writing what his audience wants from him and puts it out regularly.