Jessa takes King and Rowling to task for thinking “they’re above having editors.” Well, if that were the case, then I suspect the latest installments of the Dark Tower and Harry Potter series would be a good deal longer and more incoherent.
With the exception of the first book, Stephen King has in fact had an editor through the Dark Tower series. And, in fact, he went back and revised the first volume with the Donald M. Grant team specifically because these early stories lacked an editor. And, as usual, King also enlisted longtime agent Arthur Greene as his editor. One can also turn to the final pages of On Writing to see King’s editing in action.
As for Rowling, Barry Cunningham and Arthur Cunningham have, respectively, edited the UK and US editions of Potter.
So to hell with Indian Massacre Day or whatever today’s supposed to evoke. Return of the Reluctant proclaims today International Editor Day, saluting the fine folks who kept these writers under wraps.
In fact, King not only doesn’t think himself above editors, one of the reasons he made the move to Scribner’s back in the late 1990s is that they made it clear they would give him close editorial attention, and his work since Bag of Bones has generally been demonstrably better for it.