Yes but it is damn hard to tell someone that a book has fundamental flaws. A big part of editorial is also emotional support and faith. So the editor must have

Yes but it is damn hard to tell someone that a book has fundamental flaws. A big part of editorial is also emotional support and faith. So the editor must have dug very deep to be able to actually tell him you have to go back to the foundations. It would have been much much easier to say "it needs this or that series of changes" hoping it would be enough and avoid the more emotionally difficult task of saying "this does not work at all in its current form". So it may help to have an inner asshole when doing this.