Poisoned Wells
There's been a bunch of articles lately about how the vast morass of terribly written self-published books on the market poison the well for all self-published authors. Readers are being tricked by untrustworthy reviews into paying good money for incompetent work. The dreckworthy quality of these books causes the reader to swear off self-published books, and Something Must Be Done.
These articles primarily come from trade published authors who claim to support self-publishing (while proclaiming the majority of it dreck), and usually produce irritated/angry responses from self-publishers (along with many reasoned arguments pointing out that bad videos haven't killed off YouTube and Snooki hasn't killed off trade publishing, etc, etc), which are then used as evidence that self-publishers are delusional, hostile and crazyballs and overreact so much when people tell them what's wrong with them.
It's not a particularly productive conversation. Self-publishers are able to impact the quality of their own work, and maybe give some helpful feedback on the work of others if and when asked. But the truly incompetent either never ask for feedback or (as I've seen) simply don't care even when a forum full of self-publishers point out that they have a dozen typos on their first page. There already is a strong culture of "make your books better" among some self-publishers, while others are more interested in the latest trick for discoverability, and others still don't talk to any other self-publishers, but do their own thing.
The Borg has not yet gotten around to assimilating self-publishers. There is no hive mind here.
Nor is this an argument anyone's going to win. Some people won't read self-publishers. Some people will. Some self-publishers will put out good work. Some self-publishers won't. Some trade published books are good. Some trade published books are used as the fall-back example of "trade publishing puts out bad books too!". Some of those books make trade publishing millions of dollars.
One person's dreck is another person's doradango.
The majority of the books I read are trade published, but I'll happily buy self-published if I'm drawn by the cover, the blurb interests me and the sample's good. I've never chosen books to read by who published them. I'm undisturbed by the idea that some readers will never touch my books because I'm self-published. They can join the readers who won't read my books because I'm a woman, or because they contain swearing, or the occasional bi-normative world.
Long story short: wow, there's been a lot of Chicken Little posts about self-publishing lately.
These articles primarily come from trade published authors who claim to support self-publishing (while proclaiming the majority of it dreck), and usually produce irritated/angry responses from self-publishers (along with many reasoned arguments pointing out that bad videos haven't killed off YouTube and Snooki hasn't killed off trade publishing, etc, etc), which are then used as evidence that self-publishers are delusional, hostile and crazyballs and overreact so much when people tell them what's wrong with them.
It's not a particularly productive conversation. Self-publishers are able to impact the quality of their own work, and maybe give some helpful feedback on the work of others if and when asked. But the truly incompetent either never ask for feedback or (as I've seen) simply don't care even when a forum full of self-publishers point out that they have a dozen typos on their first page. There already is a strong culture of "make your books better" among some self-publishers, while others are more interested in the latest trick for discoverability, and others still don't talk to any other self-publishers, but do their own thing.
The Borg has not yet gotten around to assimilating self-publishers. There is no hive mind here.
Nor is this an argument anyone's going to win. Some people won't read self-publishers. Some people will. Some self-publishers will put out good work. Some self-publishers won't. Some trade published books are good. Some trade published books are used as the fall-back example of "trade publishing puts out bad books too!". Some of those books make trade publishing millions of dollars.
One person's dreck is another person's doradango.
The majority of the books I read are trade published, but I'll happily buy self-published if I'm drawn by the cover, the blurb interests me and the sample's good. I've never chosen books to read by who published them. I'm undisturbed by the idea that some readers will never touch my books because I'm self-published. They can join the readers who won't read my books because I'm a woman, or because they contain swearing, or the occasional bi-normative world.
Long story short: wow, there's been a lot of Chicken Little posts about self-publishing lately.
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Back list that has been scanned and OCR'd and then not properly proof read can be painful. I've bought a few 50 year old books at rather extortionate prices because they filled in my collection for favourite authors, and then found that the publisher had obviously only run spellcheck over them, and not had anyone do a single read through. That's truly annoying.I'm glad your sister enjoyed Touchstone :) I think more self-pubs are getting around to making POD copies available (it really doesn't make a lot of sense not to).
I am a book junkie. My house is filled with books. Good books, bad books, free books and incredibly expensive books. I resisted the e-reader for years(Years!) cause I love my books. From the bedraggled Valdemar paperbacks I got when I was sixteen to the awesome leatherbound total works of Shakespeare. When a 3 week vacation was on the horizon, I finally caved. I generally read about a book a day. Sometimes less, sometimes more. And 3 weeks with only the books I could carry with me on a plane?? So I entered the world of Kindle and the Amazon store. I had never (literally - never) ordered a thing from Amazon but my kindle sucked me in and the rest is history. I love my Kindle and a major reason why is self-published authors. I sincerely doubt I would have been exposed to as many authors as I have if I had stuck to B&M stores for my reading material. What are the chances that a Montana girl would be exposed to Australian authors?
Books have gotten so expensive that I would look for my "must-have" author and stop there. Now, I complain about someone recommending a really good series that costs me $5.99. But you know what? If it's a good story I pay it and consider it well worth the cost.
The used paperback store in town was a god send, cause I could take in a few books and come out with 20 new ones. But selection was sketchy and continuity in a series was not always possible. And the way people treat/mangle books!?
Is there unreadable dreck? You bet but want to know what publishers have put out? Unreadable dreck! If Twilight and 50 Shades are not proof of that I don't know what is.
Be proud of your indie/self-published status. Be proud of the works of art that you have slaved over and are greatly appreciated by those of us lucky enough to have found them.
Yes, being able to take an enormous number of books with you so easily is fantastic. And not having to factor in storage space is even better. :)
The only bad thing about self-published authors is their work is not always available in paperback or hardback form. Since I like to share by newly discovered authors with my sister who won't get an e-reader this means I can't share them with her. By the way she really enjoyed the Touchstone series.
So I hope all the self-published authors keep up the good work and just draft a few friends to read the book before they publish to catch some of the errors.