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Originally Posted by ekehat
I see no reason why a similar mechanism can't grow up around books. In fact, I already select many books to buy based on other people's reviews on amazon.com, which amounts to about the same thing.
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I'm not saying I completely disagree, but:
1 - Books are longer than blog entries (most of the time, anyway
), so a lot more effort is involved in discovering whether they are worth recommending.
2 - Blogs are generally free to read, and books often are not. Reading something unknown to see if you like it is less of a big deal if you don't have to pay for it first. Books on Amazon have been filtered somewhat by the editor even before the first reader-reviewer pays to read the book and write the review.
3 - Blogs are often funded in part by advertising. Do you want to see advertising in books? (This is not a rhetorical question or baiting, I'm quite serious.)
4 - I myself expect a higher quality of writing in a book than in a blog, and though I enjoy reading several blogs, they don't satisfy me the way a good, well-written book does. Writing the quality book that I want to read takes a lot of time and energy. If authors are rarely or never paid, I don't think many will put in that much time and energy. I think that would be a great loss. So whatever alternate method is found to publish books, compensation for the authors is still needed.
I also think the editorial services involved in helping a writer to improve the book are valuable, and should be compensated. Yes, it could be done some other way without a publishing house, but I thought it was worth mentioning.