[@Shoryu Magami] Heavy-handed, at least in my mind, has the connotation of being awkward, rough, and poorly done.  If it's done /well/, I would no longer call it heavy-handed.  Long-winded is slightly negative, but not as much.  What you speak of sounds more like complete, or thorough, possibly well-considered.  One gives you the entire picture.  The other slams it in your face and breaks your nose.

Not talking about anime and such for incomplete stories.  I mean solely books, where it feels cheap to make me pay three times for a story when you never said I was going to have to.  The reader who grew up with books as they used to be expects a story to usually finish in one volume.  The longer plot may take more, but there should be some sort of conclusion.  Not nothing but questions -- unless that is a deliberate stylistic choice (often for final endings, where there is not a book that comes after) and not merely a way to sell more books.

I wasn't suggesting the books as research, but as something you might enjoy.  If you don't have time for reading, that's a separate issue.

I don't think I've ever encountered an author where painstakingly thorough detail has been done well.  I've only seen it where it was handled poorly.  If you could suggest a book or two you feel does it and does it well, I'd like to take a look, just to see precisely what you mean by this.  Nor did I say anything about your story -- it's not even out yet; I'll read it or not but that won't be for a while yet, by the sound of things.  I'm not saying you should write anything other than what you see fit; certainly I dislike the idea of selling out as well.  But there is a difference between /missing/ details -- things that should be included and are not -- and the stylistic choice of how much detail is put into any description.  Necessary details -- ones with particular significance -- I would not consider optional.  It is the rest, the fine focus as opposed to the gross, where any flexibility might be found.  Missing details is simply poor writing.