Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I'd still maintain it's a valid argument. Are all professionally-published books perfect? No, certainly not. But they're typically a hell of a lot better than the typical indie book.
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Absolutely.
I adore the self-pub ebook explosion; I read lots of self-published books, and... the vast majority are atrocious. Everyone with a word processor thinks he's an author. There are thousands of books available for sale that haven't been been hit with Microsoft Word's spellcheck, much less any actual grammar check, and no story/content editing whatsoever.
There's a small fraction of the self-pub market that's making big inroads on traditional publishing. That fraction is almost all well-written and innovative, and a lot of it is groundbreaking. There are some amazing books now available that traditional publishers wouldn't touch because they didn't fit genre expectations or didn't have "trendy" themes.
However, outside of that small number of terrific self-pub books, there are huge swarms of content for which the kindest thing that can be said is "the idea might be interesting if a good editor worked it over."
I consider it very much worth putting up with that content in order to get access to the good stuff. (Well, where "putting up with" means "clicking past it on Smashwords;" I try to avoid reading it.) I don't try to convince anyone that "most" self-pub ebooks are worth reading.