Quote:
Originally Posted by Puffball
carandol, am I right in thinking this has been prompted by that essay on the Richard Herley site?
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Well, not directly, it's been something I've been thinking about for a while. The trend for self-publishing in ebook format is much more common in the role-playing game industry than it is at present in fiction publishing, but I can see it could go that way with fiction too. And as a reader, I don't really want to be wading through the virtual slush-pile looking for a good novel. I know enough people who have to do that for a living and there really is some excruciating stuff out there. We could easily be swamped with appalling Lord of the Rings rip-offs written by overenthusiastic and undertalented 16-year-olds. I mean, are you familiar with
The Eye of Argon?
Plus, like I said, there are all these "classics" returning from obscurity. And I look at the tens of thousands of books on Gutenberg and wonder how many of these are actually unjustly neglected classics, and how many went out of print because they weren't actually very good, and are only of interest to an occasional academic.
Reviews of the good stuff and occasional dire warnings of things to stay away from would be worth having.