Do you you read indie e-books? What will convince you to check out indie books?

[Just4kix]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Yes, but this just shows that if something is good enough, eventually a "real" publisher will pick it up for publication. I'm fine with waiting for that to happen instead of trying to sift through everything myself in hopes of finding a few worthwhile books.

I've been published by Penguin and Cambridge University Press, but they all turned out to be damp squibs compared to my success self-publishing.

There is an author on Kindleboards who has published 20 books through trad publishers and been on the NY bestseller list, but he has also become disillusioned and turned to self-publishing.

[Blossom]

I have no problem buying a indie book if it has good reviews. I wont pay $2.99 or even $4.99 for a unknown author that isn't published. I will however throw 99 to $1.99 cents to try them out if I am interested.

However don't expect me to pay more then $2 for your book unless you had it properly edited. Good spelling, punctuation and grammar is a must! If I got to spend 30 minutes to an hour fixing mistakes in Word that you were too lazy to do yourself. I'm not going to be a repeat buyer.

This goes for backlist titles too. I'm not going to pay more then $2.99 for a previously published story I have to fix it up myself before I can read it. I love that books are being made available again but please proof read them if nothing else.

I have a few indie books on my wishlist but the price is a little too much to take a chance on. If I saw a couple of a reviews favoring one of these books it would probably make me more inclined to buy them until then I just wait for the price to drop.

[DreamWriter]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Good spelling, punctuation and grammar is a must! If I got to spend 30 minutes to an hour fixing mistakes in Word that you were too lazy to do yourself. I'm not going to be a repeat buyer

I'm with you on that, Blossom!

[Just4kix]

I can't agree more about bad spelling and poor grammar. I certainly couldn't read a book that was full of errors, and I even have to restrain myself from getting out my red editing pen on published print copies that sometimes have errors. Backlist books that have been scanned in should at least be free of spelling and grammar issues, but may suffer from formatting problems. If you can find a reviewer you trust it is possible to discover new indie authors.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by Just4kix

I can't agree more about bad spelling and poor grammar.

On the other hand, many prestigious publishers have disappointed me in that very way. Apparently, it isn't a problem to charge roughly the same price for a book that requires no production and manufacturing costs as one that does, but it is a problem to pay one proofreader to check the less expensive book. I can't think of any other excuse for the wretched typos and scan/conversion errors in several eBooks published by Penguin -- among them, Lydia Davis's translation of Du côté de chez Swann, Huysmans' À rebours and Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. To my recollection, the printed versions of those books weren't perfect, but they succeeded at not making you stop at every paragraph to shake your fist at humanity.

[Just4kix]

I think publishers are relying more on computer spell check than proof-readers. I see quite/quiet and lead/led errors fairly often.
If I was teaching English I would ask my pupils to collect such errors and then write a letter of complaint to the publisher/newspaper editor.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Just4kix

Backlist books that have been scanned in should at least be free of spelling and grammar issues, but may suffer from formatting problems

What I mean by Proofread is I bought a few blacklist titles that had typically scan errors in it like 1 instead of 1 and / instead of ! that sort of thing. A simple regex in Word can help you scan for those type of mistakes and fix them.

Formatting is bad with most backlist or indie titles I bought. There are several different font types, sizes and chapters aren't even marked. They're not very eReader friendly.

I even came across a depreciated html tag I haven't seen anyone ever use before <tt> It makes text look like a typewriter I found out. Which is odd because it's was so out of place in the book and I'm not even sure how it got it there! The RTF copy of that book was missing text so I had to use the epub copy and had Calibre's search and replace removed them.

But to make it fair. I recently bought a book by Sourcebook, Inc. It's a new author and it look like a fun story. I paid full price for it.
The grammar in this book is horrible! I don't know how it passed an editor's eyes. Simple sentence structure missing simple words like The, Then, a, an, and...etc Not to mention the author has a really bad habit of not describing the character's physical actions clearly. I really blame the editor here. They did not read the book..they couldn't have and let that many mistakes pass.

[DreamWriter]

Originally Posted by Just4kix

I even have to restrain myself from getting out my red editing pen on published print copies that sometimes have errors.

I'm that way too. I really wish that I was less focused on things like that. The errors cause me to lose focus, and then it's difficult to enjoy the story.

[Frida Fantastic]

That's terrible of Sourcebook, I'll be wary of anything I see published by them!

[Frida Fantastic]

Originally Posted by DreamWriter

I'm that way too. I really wish that I was less focused on things like that. The errors cause me to lose focus, and then it's difficult to enjoy the story.

Well, readers shouldn't be expected to ignore errors. It's like watching a movie and seeing bloopers everywhere. Seeing one won't ruin it for me, but seeing it time after time will make me want to go hunt down the editor.

[Elfwreck]

I wouldn't say, like watching a movie and seeing bloopers. It's like seeing the cords for the mics and the backs of the stage pieces and the camera pulls back so you can see it's all in a studio, not a house. Someone was supposed to deal with those parts before it got released to the public.

I've read at least one ebook that was riddled with punctuation errors and awful formatting that I absolutely loved--but (1) it was free and (2) it was focused on an incredibly tiny niche of potential readers, who will all absolutely not care how badly formatted it is because it's screamingly hilarious--to that tiny niche of people.

It was my wakeup call for how wonderful the proliferation of ebooks and self-publishing is. Because this could *never* be published by a traditional printing company, not even within its niche. And it's going to be one of my long-term favorite re-reads.

[DreamWriter]

Originally Posted by bashfulbanshee

Well, readers shouldn't be expected to ignore errors.

I agree with you.

Authors and publishers should be held responsible for producing a high-quality book. If there are too many errors, I would bring it to their attention. Most would want to know so they can fix the problems. That book that Blossom mentioned should never have been published that way. Somebody dropped the ball on that one.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by Blossom

What I mean by Proofread is I bought a few blacklist titles that had typically scan errors in it like 1 instead of 1 and / instead of ! that sort of thing. A simple regex in Word can help you scan for those type of mistakes and fix them.

I understand your point, but I don't simply mean scan errors and substitutions. I've spent half a decade pointing them out as an editor for various imprints and far longer discovering them as a writer reading through my own galleys (or "blues"). What I'm referring to are errors that an actual person would be needed to point out.

Davis's Proust contains sentences that forget what they're talking about half-way through, and all because a dangling modifier has been introduced by a homonym, or a conjunction has been substituted for a visually similar pronoun (when instead of them), or any number of things might have happened which are more difficult to find than, say, arid instead of and. This is especially annoying when the text is a translation.

And when a book is less prestigious or marketable than any I've mentioned, it can receive even less attention at the editing stage.

That's why a small press with a reasonably conscientious staff is sometimes more likely to produce a readable book than a major publisher. I suspect that a really diligent indie author might do a better job of creating a readable ebook than a major utilizing an impersonal conversion process. Official publication is not necessarily the most painstaking.

Here's what I'd like to see:

Just as we have systems set in place for self-publishing and marketplaces for selling self-published books, so I'd like to see an exchange program created (with user ratings!) for writers to proofread, make suggestions and otherwise improve each other's work before self-publication. This could also be done by volunteers with no interest in being published at all, but I'm not certain what their incentive would be other than receiving abject gratitude.

You could then create an official agreed-upon seal for books which had undergone that process, and the seal would then be verified and advertised in particular marketplaces whenever a self-published ebook had been throroughly checked and reviewed through that method.

I myself am the co-editor of a web magazine that has published original writing by people like William Burroughs (posthumously) and Luc Sante, and I'm maddened by mistakes that can't be corrected due to scheduling and formatting constraints. In an ideal world, I'd have enough staff to ensure the magazine's copy was perfect and still be allowed enough time to write fiction, criticism and poetry (my first priority).

Recently, a friend's book was scheduled to be published under an art gallery imprint. I had to read the book through, write a report, and look for deeper editing errors (place-name consistency, superfluous language, solecisms, unresolved threads, etc.). All that hard work would have made more sense if devoting it to his book had meant he'd be doing the same for mine.

[Russell Brooks]

Originally Posted by bashfulbanshee

Hi,

New poster and Kindle 3 owner here. I haven't read an indie book yet, but I have one on my to read list (by Gregg Taylor, I've been listening to the Decoder Ring Theatre podcast for six months now). I'm just curious about everyone's thoughts here regarding indie e-books.

I'm a voracious reader and I'm very open to reading indie authors, but I haven't found any other indie authors I've placed on my to-read list because I haven't:

(1) Gotten a recommendation from a friend whose taste I like (which is how I got into the Decoder Ring Theatre)
(2) Found an indie book with a description + cover in a format that's accessible enough for me to sample it.

It all seems pretty trivial, but as a reader, I want to spend more time reading books than looking for books. It's pretty overwhelming looking at the sea of indie e-books out there. I'm sure there's gold out there for me, but I just don't want to sort through them all!

So here's my personal wishlist for indie e-books:

(1) A rise in niche e-book websites that in a way, vets the authors for me.

I like Smashwords as much as the next person, but everyone's on it! I want a nice professional-looking website, at minimum looks as nice as ManyBooks.net, with covers and ...What do you folks think? Readers? Indie writers? Do these nicely presented third party websites that cater to a niche already exist and I'm just missing out? I'm open to being enlightened

There's good and bad in both Indie and Traditionally Published. I've read some authors who had a publisher and I didn't care much for their books, and then there are Indie authors that I didn't care for either. By the same token, I've found the opposite. Today there are traditionally published authors who have left their publishers in favor of going Indie because they're fed up with their agents and their publishers. Look at the case of one of my favorite authors, Barry Eisler: http://www.mediabistro.com/ebooknews...self-pub_b7846

JA Konrath was TP when I discovered him, then he went Indie for personal reasons. Guess what, his books are just as good.

Hope this helps.

[Just4kix]

Do readers care about the quality of the writing?

An interesting article

[Shortened URL deleted - MODERATOR]