Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion
III. Goodreads Readers
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Why don't more people read Self-published authors?
Yeah... I read Ender's Game recently, but I got a battered paperback from a charity shop, so my conscience is fairly clear on that score... But if there's one subject on Goodreads more emotive than self-published authors, it's Orson Scott Card, so let's just leave that one there :)
Dear Grimlock -You are right, I should have said "most readers". I generally try not to make all-or-nothing statements.
Lisa
Not Hate, All Hail, bored by. I find that there's a difference. I've read a few lately, which I enjoyed: The Sexy Part of the Bible (which people either love or hate in the Urban fantasy category) and Guiamo as well as Cumoro and Morlanos by Marshall Best. I intend to read Book 4 as well ...these are in the Historical Fantasy category. THESE did not bore me. I must also say that in each case I had contacted or knew the author either personally or through their page. An author's attitude is very important to me in choosing whether I will read their book. I've met some famous and award winning authors whose books I wouldn't wrap fish in because of their attitude.
So you're saying that when you meet a pleasant author you do use their books to wrap fish?Wow. That's certainly a leftfield compliment to pay a writer...
How many of the SPAs here have purchased works of their fellow indies?I'll go first - I have! Anyone else?
It's very hard to wrap fish in an ebook. Believe me, I have tried...
I have. In fact, most of the books on my Kindle are self-published.
Martyn wrote: "I have. In fact, most of the books on my Kindle are self-published."Woo-hoo! Excellent! Which is your favorite?
@VardanI have - I'm particularly fond of Rosen Trevithick's funnier stuff and anything by Darren Humphries. But finding more to read all the time. Ron Askew needs to pull his finger out and finish another book.
@ Andrew... will check out the authors you mentioned! Thanks for the recommendation!
Self-pub authors are growing exponentially. Check out Bowker's research on the growth of new ISBN applications. Self-pub is the new future of mainstream.
Richard wrote: "Vardan wrote: "How many of the SPAs here have purchased works of their fellow indies?"I do all the time; mentioned some in my earlier post today... :-)"
Excellent!
DC wrote: "Self-pub authors are growing exponentially. Check out Bowker's research on the growth of new ISBN applications. Self-pub is the new future of mainstream."Self-pub is just another way of self-expression :)
Vardan wrote: "How many of the SPAs here have purchased works of their fellow indies?I'll go first - I have! Anyone else?"
I have, too. Sure, I got a lot of SP books for free through read-for-review programs or special sales day on Amazon. But I also buy some.
Actually, I think that starting with R4Rs, and realising that, hey, those novels weren't bad at all, helped me grasp the value of SPAs very early. Well, that is, last year. I didn't have a tablet before that, so I stuck to printed books, and kind of restricted myself to "known material", so to speak.
Yzabel wrote: "Vardan wrote: "How many of the SPAs here have purchased works of their fellow indies?I'll go first - I have! Anyone else?"
I have, too. Sure, I got a lot of SP books for free through read-for-re..."
I think there is a good way of balancing the reading of the more famous authors with trying the works of lesser known writers for I think that for every 10 mad rambling works one may get a real gem they wouldn't have ever known if they hadn't tried it. It's a bit like a treasure hunt, really, imagine you are travelling the jungles of Amazon(.com) and suddenly you stumble upon a lost city of wonders :)
Vardan wrote: "Woo-hoo! Excellent! Which is your favorite?"My reviews are public, so are the books I added. If you're looking for a recommendation: Voice
Andrew wrote: "So you're saying that when you meet a pleasant author you do use their books to wrap fish?Wow. That's certainly a leftfield compliment to pay a writer..."
Hey... I hadn't thought of that! Excellent! No, I recommend the book and put it in a shrine at my house right by my computer so I can look up and be inspired whenever I see the spine of the book. I don't do e-books.
Vardan wrote: "Richard wrote: "Vardan wrote: "How many of the SPAs here have purchased works of their fellow indies?"I do all the time; mentioned some in my earlier post today... :-)"
Excellent!"
I shelled out $60 for the four books I previously mentioned by Marshall Best The Guiamo Series. He's SPA and doing well.
Richard wrote: "Lisa wrote: "It's important for me that the book be as perfect as possible."Totally true... and that's why I constantly edit and fix errors..."
And why I will be doing that, too!
Mary wrote: "I shelled out $60 for the four books I previously mentioned by Marshall Best The Guiamo Series."While I am genuinely happy you've found books that engage you to read, I truly am, it seems like this expensive could have been one, given your comments concerning not being able to afford editors, that was sacrificed for your own work, couldn't it be?
The editors I've seen are 2 cent a word for the cheap ones. At 538 PAGES with X number of 2 cent words per page... That's a big difference between the amount that would run and $60.00. The author mentioned was also willing to sit down with me for almost 2 hours and discuss self-publishing, encouraging me to go for it.
Mary wrote: "That's a big difference between the amount that would run and $60.00. "I understand that. I'm not saying it would be the only sacrifice made. I've had to go through months of extraneous expensive sacrifice to afford items/editing/marketing for my book, including eating Ramen noodles for two meals a day for months on end.
I simply stating that it seems like that $60 could have gone into the "savings for editor" pool? Rather than lament the ability to afford one.
And it would have, in retrospect, if it had occurred after I realized the extra expenses that would have occurred and that I would be retired as well as my spouses income reduced. It didn't, so I didn't.
Mary wrote: "And it would have, in retrospect, if it had occurred after I realized the extra expenses that would have occurred and that I would be retired as well as my spouses income reduced. It didn't, so I d..."But you said you were aware of publishing a book filled with errors that an editor could have fixed. That said, once you knew those errors were there, having not yet purchased those novels, it seems like it would have been wiser to decide to shelf that money toward a future editor.
I'm not trying to pester you, Mary. I'm not. I am only trying to help. Despite the retirement and apparent lack of income, any expenditure at this point, aware your work could be improved through an editor, seems a disservice to readers to choose not to do it.
I'm getting my current work edited right now.
I do have a few favorite authors, but mostly I'll read a book if it sounds intriguing and appeals to me, regardless if the author is self-published or not. It's all about the writing and the story.
In the history of writing there have been times when books or books of a specific genre were seen as a licence to print money. At other times, publishers have kept their cheque-books firmly closed. This means there are published authors out there who in another time might have been self-published and self-published authors who, in better days, would have been signed. There are authors who wallpapered their bathrooms with rejection slips before they eventually got their bestseller out there and others who gave up after a handful of rejections and put the books out themselves. Being professionally published is no guarantor of quality any more than being self-published is a sign of being dross. And if the only difference is a posh cover and an extra editing pass, I for one am not going to prejudge.
Thanks Andrew. This "imperfect" author appreciates your sentiment.
Perfection is boring. As Tyler Durden would say - even Mona Lisa is falling apart :)
Being professionally published is no guarantor of qualityI agree on the level of the story. I have put down professionally published books halfway through, because they didn't go anywhere. Though, professional publishing gives a certain level of quality of writing. I have seen too many self-published books which could use a good editing.
Vanessa wrote: "you are not your khakis, eh?"...and you open the door and you step inside---
we're inside our hearts.
now imagine your pain is a white ball of healing light.
that's right, feel your pain,
the pain itself, it's a white ball of healing light.
i don't think so.
Somehow relates to the struggles and anguish of us - the aspiring authors :)
I have seen too many self-published books which could use a good editing.You don't necessarily get that with a publisher. When my own "professional" novel was accepted by its first publisher, I really had to fight to stop the editor diluting what I saw as my voice. The second publisher (long story) understood precisely what I was trying to do and made no such attempt.
I know we keep coming back to the money issue for editing. I really do believe that if someone cares enough, they can find the money. We're not talking about tens of thousands of dollars. We're talking an amount of money that can be earned with diligent application of effort.Here's some ways I've put the pennies in the jar.
* buy food in bulk
* eat at home
* sell off all books, DVDs, clothes, etc. that I didn't absolutely need
* fold and sell paper origami items
* offer services in ebook creation and other things I know how to do
I looked at every aspect of my world and tried to figure out how to get the pennies. They add up. It was important to me to do this, and I found a way.
Heck, you can even barter services with someone else. Find someone who knows how to edit and then offer to do things for them that they need help with. Anything.
If you really make it a priority, it can be done. If you don't care enough to do it, then you need to accept that people will judge you on your non-finished product.
Lisa
Lisa wrote: "II really do believe that if someone cares enough, they can find the money. We're not talking about tens of thousands of dollars. We're talking an amount of money that can be earned with diligent application of effort."Lisa,
Precisely. It isn't tons of money. A little self restraint and willpower and it can be done.
I like your origami approach, btw. :)
And offering to trade services is quite viable. Editors are people; they understand money situations (especially if they've dealt with self published authors in the past). I cleaned one editor's house for a month in exchange for services and babysat the other's children for three Saturday nights.
The point is that is is accomplishable.
Sometimes you don't know if people are being hateful or helpful. I had the same experience in my college days, as a Creative Writing minor, Andrew. I submitted poetry to editors for a Poetry Anthology. When the book came out, the poem had my name and the same title on it, but only vaguely resembled the poem I submitted. Even the meaning had been compromised.
B.C. -My aim with including the origami is demonstrating that it's just pieces of paper. There's no "expense" really in doing it. There are things like that in all of our lives. You can use wine corks to make wreaths. You can use empty wine bottles to make flower vases. If you want it badly enough, you can make it happen.
Cleaning was exactly one of the ideas I was going to mention, but I didn't want the list to get massive. Thanks for bringing it up. It's something any one of us can do, and it's a valuable service.
Lisa
Mary -I strongly doubt most people have the interest or energy to actively be hateful to someone they don't even know :).
I agree that in poetry changing just one word can change the meaning immensely. With Mused, the literary journal I run, we don't change poems. We either accept them or reject them. That means that a poem can be nearly perfect for us, and we have an issue with a word, so we won't run it. In rare cases we'll make the time to chat with the poet and ask them about it, but we can't do that with everyone. It's part of why we offer feedback. That way we can point out those things to poets and, if they're interested in changing, we can revisit it for an upcoming issue.
I enjoy writing haiku. I remember vividly that I'd written a haiku about a woman sitting in a window seat, hand pressed against the window's glass, plaintively gazing out the window, longing to be free. An artist friend of mine decided to illustrate this poem, which was of course lovely of him. But he forgot the glass in his illustration. So he had the woman sitting in an open window, the breeze in her hair, smiling as she looked out into the distance. He then changed the poem to also not have the glass. The entire poem was now altered. It wasn't my feeling or emotion any more. It had some of the same words, but the whole reason I wrote it was now gone.
He certainly didn't do it to be hateful or malicious. He was being sweet in illustrating my poem. He just had a different vision than I did, and didn't quite realize it. Maybe he was trying to release me ;).
Lisa
B.C. wrote: "Lisa wrote: "II really do believe that if someone cares enough, they can find the money. We're not talking about tens of thousands of dollars. We're talking an amount of money that can be earned wi..."I've given people the wrong impression, Lisa. I HAVE the money. The problem is that I've been taken advantage of too often. I've had a lifetime of so much conflicting, harmful, and downright mean-spirited advice, that I tend to trust no one. Re-entering the community showed me nothing new in that respect. I need to find an inexpensive editor who had my best interest and my ideas at heart, not his/her wallet. Finding one of those might be like finding a trustworthy car mechanic. (wry, but sad smile) I've tried to barter, but again, run into a wall.
At 2 cents a word for 538 full pages, I can't imagine that's cheap. I figured about $6000.00 rounded.
Linda - I agree about the validation. One reason I held out and kept fighting to be "properly" published was that I felt to do otherwise was almost arrogant: after all, if the people in the industry don't like my book that may be as much to do with the quality of the book as with their personal preferences. But that was almost a decade ago and times have changed.
In recent years, the advantages of being accepted by a publisher have faded. Time was a publisher would throw time and money at publicising a new author, using contacts in the media or celebrity endorsements, getting the book noticed in a way that a self-published author simply couldn't. Now the Internet has put more power in the hands of the author whilst at the same time the publishers have started to concentrate their money and time more on promoting authors with a proven track record. Small publishers may even fail to put resources into distribution, leaving the author to do all the work themselves.
What this means is that new authors are increasingly forming the option that signing with a regular publisher, as well as being hard to achieve, is little more than signing away some of your royalties for no obvious gain. Authors are becoming more likely to self-publish as a first, rather than a last resort. Although the ease and cheapness of electronic and print-on-demand publishing means that some less well-developed works are getting out there, it means that some pretty good books are being self-published too. If authors can make a success through this approach then the trend will only accelerate.
Going forward it's likely that traditional publishing will break down, that authors will increasingly buy in services like editing, cover design and marketing, whilst professional review sites will arise whose honest opinion will take the place of the perceived quality filter that professional publishing once represented. After all, if people trust a publisher, why not a review site?
In terms of my own experiences, I don't see the early editing issues as evidence of malice (why would you show malice to someone you never met) but there will always be editors who are themselves frustrated writers and who therefore see their job as putting their own stamp on other people's work. For some authors that's not necessarily a problem, but if an author has a strong sense of what their writing is about it's bound to lead to some disagreement.
So what would you recommend? I'm no newbie. I HAVE tried traditional publishing (and been rejected) for earlier incarnations of the same work. Looking back on these earlier versions, I agree with the rejection. However, I have had a lot of cheerleaders recently who encouraged me (some who are in the business of writing) to try again. On doing so, I found positions suddenly changed. So, yeah, trust is an issue, too.
I write reviews as well as novels. In fact, I consider writing a review as much a way to develop as an author as writing a book - you have to analyse exactly why a book does or doesn't work in order to criticise it. And I have no problem with hurting feelings: as long as I am clear in my analyses (and honest about where I think they might be personal opinion) I don't think an author should get too upset. What has struck me over the time I've been reviewing books, however, is that professionally published books are no more or less likely to elicit a "how did this get published" response from me than self-published ones. And as I write more of my own books, my critical faculties have sharpened: there are books I loved as a teenager which get me really annoyed now. If I ever go back and review David Eddings' books it wouldn't be pretty...
But you're right that this discussion is about whether people read self-published books or actively avoid them. My point was that there's no reason why it should matter, but I am aware that as with indie record labels there will be some people who support self-published authors as a blow against "the system" and there will be others who, perhaps because of one or two bad books, reject them all.
But that's not most people: most people will buy a book because they've heard good things about it. Some will buy them because they've heard bad things about it and wonder if it's really as bad as they've heard. If the next Harry Potter or the next Fifty Shades of Grey was self-published and it got noticed, I'm sure most people wouldn't let the fact it was self-published stop them buying it. The key is producing a book that people want to read and then getting enough of them to read it to create a buzz - and that's the same whether you're self-published or professionally published.
At the end of the day, a trad publisher means that a dispassionate professional looked at this work and said "Hey, we can make some money on this." Most SPA's never pass through that kind of filter.I know I'm jumping in here, but I've read some excellent SPA's and even freefic, much better than some stuff I've paid for. What I never have read is a freefic or SPA that I didn't think could be improved by a professional process.
And I am not excepting my own work from this. I know my upcoming traditionally published novel is going to be better than anything else I have out there, and not just because it's produced to a more professional standard. That highly critical acceptance/editing process made me a better writer. I did not lose my voice, and a couple of the changes they wanted me to make were initially problematic for me. Once they were made, I ended up agreeing that they actually improved the work. There were a couple I held fast on, and my editor did come around to my point of view, and helped me make changes that supported my vision of the story, and hopefully made it plausible and compelling for the reader.
D.C. - I agree that's what traditional publishing can mean, but it doesn't follow that every author needs that filter or that some of the filters aren't either made with big holes or too fine a mesh. And professionals aren't always dispassionate: no matter how they try their personal tastes will always influence their choices to some extent. That's why the Frank Herberts and JK Rowlings of this world went through so many rejections before making it big. If the publishers who rejected them were dispassionate then they weren't very smart.
Thank You Andrew, and D.C. I will be slogging through, because writing was the only thing I ever wanted to do. I will be taking advice, but not ALL of it. I will be producing a better product.I already told my husband I needed to live to be 100 because it might take that long for me to get the right direction and HELPFUL advice. My feeling is, if I'm 65 and still have the fire to write, undiminished from my youth (and fans in the background going "Go Granny!") despite all of the grief, conflict and blind alleys that have come my way, I must have something to offer.
With that, I need to stop reading Goodreads for the day and get back to polishing my writing. I received what I consider good advice for the opening of Book 2 last night. I would like to implement it before the Writer's Club meeting Saturday.
Andrew wrote: "I have seen too many self-published books which could use a good editing.You don't necessarily get that with a publisher. When my own "professional" novel was accepted by its first publisher, I r..."
This is the long and short of it. My first book is professionally edited. It no longer feels like my work. I have an editing background and will proceed to edit my own work from here on out. That is until someone pays me to allow another person to destroy my baby. I firmly believe we need to un-edit our world. Everything doesn't have to be written to a certain set of guidelines. We don't all need to hear "SAG" thrown at us. Sorry, I tripped on the soapbox getting up here.
-Mark Alan Trimeloni
Nudist Horror Writer
Mary wrote: "Sometimes you don't know if people are being hateful or helpful. I had the same experience in my college days, as a Creative Writing minor, Andrew. I submitted poetry to editors for a Poetry Anth..."Amen, Mary. Don't let someone else edit your books. If you need guidance, then try The Chicago Manual of Style. You'll be better off. You only have to catch the major problems to release a good story. Use a program to catch spelling errors. That's 99% of it. Most readers won't even catch where you missed an em dash or improperly used a comma. Most of editing is subjective anyway. Wait a minute, I think that soapbox is on my head now.
-Mark Alan Trimeloni
Nudist Horror Writer
Of course editors make mistakes, or reject things that they think have merit for what are essentially marketing reasons. This is why I'm a hybrid. I have some works that I know just aren't very marketable, and self-publishing lets me share them with whatever audience is out there to find LGBT Christian romances.I personally tend to think most of the works of Frank Herbert should be used for sound-proofing (he's one of those writers-you love him or you don't) and I'm pretty sure most of the rejection letters J.K. Rowling got were because the editors in question erroneously thought there was little market, not because the story lacked merit. Despite the initial rejection, they also both DID get published.
I've also occasionally picked up things that made me seriously wonder what the editor was smoking that day. However, that's the exception. Most traditionally published books are at least marginally readable, and SPA's are the Wild West. There are gems, and there are things that might have been really good after six rewrites and a professional editor, and there just a whole lot of clunkers.
I'm pretty willing to experiment, but I've picked up a few things where the first few sentences had promise, and then... Oh, dear.
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Aw, thanks! Yes, historical romances aren't really my bag either, to be honest...