What are eBooks?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Perhaps he believes Scalzi is part of group #3

In his genre he is a big seller.
His multimillion dollar contract was news, after all.
If there were hundreds of SF writers making that kind of money nobody would've noticed.

Again, remember the recent "discovery" by the Author's Guild that half its members would live in poverty if writing was their only source of income. This, while the publishers rake in billions through "creative" contract clauses.

For ever big bucks Scalzi or Preston standing up for tradpub and signing letters to the DOJ, there's a hundred just sucking it up and hoping their next book doesn't come out while their publisher is in a catfight with B&N (like S&S in 2013) or Amazon (like Hachette in 2014).

Seriously, who would volunteer for those deals if they had a choice?
As I said, either they're naive or they don't have a choice.

[dickloraine]

There are more books out there, than anybody ever could read. There are not infinite books, but if we project in the future we maybe could say so. Fun fact about infinity: The crap inside a infinite list is infinite. But the good is infinit too

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Baen is a tiny company, working in a small corner of a small market.
They put out maybe 50-60 new titles a year.
The randy penguin puts out well over 15,000 titles a year.

Baen is the very definition of outlier, both for readers and authors. They don't even operate out of NYC or London.

I would hardly set them up as an example of what tradpub *is* but I would (and do) hold them up as an example of what tradpub *should* be.

Small or not, they are, by any reasonable definition of the term, a "traditional publisher". I believe they form a clear counter-example to your assertion that no traditional publisher treats their authors well.

[doubleshuffle]

While certainly being no friend of the huge corporations that own most traditional publishers these days, I gave up my last attempt at reading a self-published book when I ran into the beautiful sentence:

"Advanced Physical Fitness was a right of passage for seniors at Bridgton High, [...]"

Yeah, rite.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

While certainly being no friend of the huge corporations that own most traditional publishers these days, I gave up my last attempt at reading a self-published book when I ran into the beautiful sentence:

"Advanced Physical Fitness was a right of passage for seniors at Bridgton High, [...]"

Yeah, rite.

Your sew rite!

[ApK]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Your sew rite!

You spelled 'sow' wrong.

Still, one missed homophone seems like a piddling reason to dismiss all self-published books. Certainly more egregious mistakes can be found in most trad paperbacks as well.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ApK

Still, one missed homophone seems like a piddling reason to dismiss all self-published books.

I don't think anyone's suggested that. I suspect that "rite of passage" is an expression that a lot of even well-read people would get wrong, because "rite" is a relatively unusual word that's rarely used except in that specific expression. There probably are people who genuinely believe it has to do with their "rights", as with expressions like "right of way" or "right to arm bears".

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by ApK

You spelled 'sow' wrong.

Still, one missed homophone seems like a piddling reason to dismiss all self-published books. Certainly more egregious mistakes can be found in most trad paperbacks as well.

Dunno. This isn't a typo but a mistake by someone who doesn't even know the meaning of the words he uses. It would have taken a very good book indeed for me to keep on going after that. Since it was a bit meh anyway, I just dropped it.

And of course I am not dismissing all self-published books; there are just so many books on my TBR pile, and the self-pubbed stuff has been moved so far back now that I will probably never get to any of it.

[DiapDealer]

My favorite goofy mistake from any book (trad- or self-pubbed) was the following sentence:

"The sound of gunfire lit the afternoon sky as they prepared to leave."

Tried to read that book (trad-pubbed, btw) several different times, but could never get past that sentence.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't think anyone's suggested that

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

there are just so many books on my TBR pile, and the self-pubbed stuff has been moved so far back now that I will probably never get to any of it.

So that's effectively the same thing as giving up on them. Plus when you said

"I gave up my last attempt at reading a self-published book when I ran into the beautiful sentence:"

I wasn't sure if you meant 'last' as in 'most recent previous' or as in 'final.'

[ApK]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There probably are people who genuinely believe it has to do with their "rights", as with expressions like "right of way" or "right to arm bears".

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Dunno. This isn't a typo but a mistake by someone who doesn't even know the meaning of the words he uses. It would have taken a very good book indeed for me to keep on going after that. Since it was a bit meh anyway, I just dropped it.

I wasn't thinking it was a typo, I was thinking more that the author, consciously or unconsciously typed the wrong word, thinking, perhaps, as Harry says, or that he would type something like "All students have a right to take that class" and then he or an editor missed correcting it.

I often type the wrong "there|their|they're" as I'm drafting, not because I don't know which one to use, but because I sometimes type on autopilot, and then I immediately correct it.*

ApK

*or in the case of forum posts, chats and other extemporania, I don't correct it, and just look like I don't know the meaning of the words I use.

[doubleshuffle]

Yeah, the autopilot typing happens to me too, but if I published a book I want people to pay for I should really put in some effort to get rid of errors like that. Hell, I put in that effort in books I upload here and don't expect people to pay for...

[Cinisajoy]

Yes, books for public consumption should be proofread and edited.
Posts on a forum not so much.
Well unless it is can when one means can not.
Opposite meanings there.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Dunno. This isn't a typo but a mistake by someone who doesn't even know the meaning of the words he uses. It would have taken a very good book indeed for me to keep on going after that. Since it was a bit meh anyway, I just dropped it.

It's the kind of mistake that suggests the material was not edited or proofed by anyone other than the author who made the mistake. I don't know that one such mistake would stop me in my tracks, but it would make me wary.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Catlady

It's the kind of mistake that suggests the material was not edited or proofed by anyone other than the author who made the mistake. I don't know that one such mistake would stop me in my tracks, but it would make me wary.

It makes me wonder how many mistakes the reader had already found and was that one just the last straw.