The tangent in question reminds me of when Joni Mitchell told everybody she was the modern Mozart. Sums her up! (and it was all downhill from there, hon) I like Anne Rice too but she may have turned a corner this time. True also Hatches that the longer a creator keeps a franchise going the more fans become attached to their own expectations of how said franchise should develop, thus audiences become increasingly tough to please.
Editing as an in-house function at publishing houses is indeed becoming something of a dying/lost art. A friend of mine was for several years a successful editor at Knopf of all places, considered to be one of the most prestigous imprints. They cut their editorial staff drastically and fired him, even after he'd edited Katherine Hepburn's autobiography and several other top-sellers. Since then he says the trend is to run manuscripts through spell check and call it a day. You can see the evidence in such tripe as The Devil Wears Prada, etc.
Nevertheless editors can chop things to bits and ruin things too. It's all so subjective. Personally I've never felt her works were too long or needed to be cut in half, IMHO. No one's work will ever be perfect or all things to all people. On my score card Anne falls comfortably in the "well-written trash" column, something I aspire to myself. I think's it a cool place to be, even if she's totally off her rocker!!!