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carandol, am I right in thinking this has been prompted by that essay on the Richard Herley site? He makes some good points about the publishing business. My sister used to date a writer (no names), quite a successful one, and the treatment he got from his publishers was terrible. It seems the more you enjoy your job, the worse you get paid and the worse you're treated by employers. AFAIK, Herley is the only writer actually putting his stuff out as shareware, but when others (like my sister's ex) realise there's a possibility of going it alone there could be a mass exodus to the web.
Herley has got a solid record, his reviews speak for themselves, but what about writers who haven't got that? HarryT, that's where the need for a review site comes in. People are happy to write reviews for Amazon - why not harness that urge? If we could also do the "5 out of 8 people found this helpful" thing, that would add a lot of value.
If authors publish their books straight to the web for the ebook-reading fraternity, I say bring it on! I'm tired of overpaying for ebooks that I don't even finish. In fact mainly I use my Reader for PD books, from Gutenberg especially. I'm keen on the idea of paying only for books I like, especially at shareware prices, but I'm not keen on downloading a whole load of turkeys just to find something good.
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