There's something there, though. This kind of copy error, along with the other criticisms in the article, suggest a kind of first draft quality. Certainly improving it is the role of the editor, but that depends on cooperation with the author.

Personally I've noticed this as well - I think hot authors are given free rein to publish again on as short of a timeline as possible. Publishing is a tough business and when you have a marketable name, you have to move quickly or lose the attention of the reading public. So they rush out the new book, or reissue an old one, in order to keep sales up. The quality suffers - if The Trees (which I have not read) was given a solid, collaborative close edit, these issues would very likely be resolved. Instead you see what is consistent with a superficial edit of a book that perhaps was not really ready to be meet the public just yet.

Last, friendly typo note for yourself: I believe you meant whose, not who's!