If you've done any research or reading into the craft of writing - successful writing, anyway, you know that the mantra is edit, edit, and edit some more. There's a great deal of truth behind this. Perhaps, it's true that Lee Child only does a single draft of his Reacher books. If so, he is a freak of some kind. The rest of us have to edit, rewrite, and polish almost endlessly. For example, I published Sleeping Dogs: The Awakening in June of last year. I've not stopped editing and polishing it since then. In fact, I'm involved in a major review and editing effort right now.
Part of what I want to accomplish is to tighten up the book. A writer can get away with a 144,000 word manuscript if they are a known entity - already have successful sales of other books behind them. Publishers know the writer's fan base will buy the new book, even if it's priced to accommodate the extra cost incurred by the length. But for an unknown, publishers don't want to incur those costs. If they're going to take a risk on a hitherto unknown writer, they want to mitigate risk by going with a "thinner" book, something on the order of 80,000 - 90,000 words.
I also have another reason for the current extensive editing. Another famous tenet of writing is that your literary efforts need professional editing. While there are many different types of editing, two appear to me to be the most important for my purposes. One is developmental or content editing. Mark Anderson at bookeditor.tripod.com defines this as:
"in fiction, characters and plot are the two main areas where developmental editing will have the most impact. With regard to characters, developmental editing looks at their integrity ("would this character do this?"), their dialog (incredibly important!), and their actions and reactions, to name just a few aspects. With regard to plot, developmental editing takes a look at the flow, the essential story (what the plot is really about), plot twists, pace, suspense (every story has suspense on some level--or should--or what's the point of reading it?), and other aspects."
The other type of editing that I believe can benefit my book is line editing. Miranda Parker defines it as: "A line edit looks at the sentence structure, word choices, continuity and consistency. Often fixes awkward phrasing, smooths out rough or unclear writing, and decreases wordiness to make the writing tighter and more powerful."
Because editing services are expensive, easily reaching into the thousands of dollars, I want to do as much preliminary work done as possible myself. And why at this stage am I so concerned with editing and polishing a novel that's been published for the past year? Ultimately, if the goal is to reach as many potential readers as possible, and sell as many copies as possible, the author almost certainly has to find an agent who can successfully sell the story to a publishing house. Self-published indie authors have been known to hit the "big time" on their own, but it's about a 1-in-a-million shot. Those aren't good odds. Agents are inundated with queries and manuscripts on a daily basis. To get their attention, the book has to be very polished and professional - ready to be reviewed by a publisher, not in need of substantial editing.