Quote:
Originally Posted by Dimwit
OTOH a book is nothing more than the physical representation of someone's imagination. Yes, it shouldn't matter that being a physical object has any sort of meaning but it does. To have passed a hurdle of acceptance has established that person over anyone who *hasn't* passed that hurdle. Doing enough times and your name becomes a brand and you can market that brand effectively without actually doing the hardcopy bit.
The whole point of getting published is that it's a form of peer review. You may decry it as a form of elitism and everyone should be a gatecrasher but it doesn't work that way. To quote Dash "If everyone is special, then no one is." Put everything out there on the "web" and you'll find that no one gets recognized. We want the gatekeepers. They provide a function. And you'll find, those that do get invited in, are more than willing to work within the system to keep it functioning. The big issue currently is how to slim the system down so that it doesn't have to cost so much.
Book Clubs, celebrity edorsements, pure advertising, blog spam, word of mouth, freebie giveaways. Something will work if the work is good but there's an awful lot of noise out there.
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All of that's true... in theory.
Problem is, publishers often pay more attention to money than they do their actual purpose - which is indeed peer review. Some of the crap that gets released and becomes popular because the person who wrote it (or had it ghost written) is famous, or simply because of marketing, is... well, crap.
Also, some people don't pass those hurdles not because they aren't good enough (and you don't necessarily have to be any good to pass them anyway), but because they choose not to. Other times, good works get rejected because the publishing houses don't think they're marketable enough.
I'm all aboard the idea of publishing houses, and the idea of peer review. I just don't think that publishing houses actually execute that idea in reality.
There are some indie authors who have a great deal of peer review. People love their work so much that they volunteer to be editors, beta readers, do cover designs, etc. That says a lot more to me about a written work than going through a publishing house. Because it's something people have done because they LIKE the work, not because it's going to make them X amount of money.
There's no evidence that we need gatekeepers in the form of publishing houses. We're already seeing evidence of new models, like the one above, coming in to replace it. Also, it's not as though reviews will stop existing, or as though I can't stop reading something if it sucks. And I'm already taking the risk that something will suck even if a publishing house has endorsed it. That endorsement doesn't mean it won't suck.
I trust the organic form of peer review that is emerging more than the publishing houses. Because the publishing houses have shown themselves to be more concerned with money than quality. The organic forms of peer review are concerned with quality.
I think of this the same way I think of medical studies. I am heavily skeptical of what the drug company that invented a drug says about its efficacy and safety. I am less skeptical of what an independent study says about it. Same concept.