Who reads your books before they go to the editor?
With two exceptions, no one has ever read a complete novel of mine before my editor did. The first exception was my very first book, The Fires of Paratime, later republished by Tor as The Timegod, which several other editors saw — and rejected — before my present editor bought it. The second was The Soprano Sorceress, which I insisted my wife read, for the obvious reason that she is a soprano and a professional in music, which I am not.