MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - The self-epublishing bubble

dadioflex · 02-14-2012, 10:42 AM

All those books require a filter.

Traditionally the publisher was the quality filter through which most books did not pass.

Then the agent became that filter as publishers gave up the job, allowing agents to do the work for them.

There's only one filter left and that's readers. That tidal wave of crap is going to be filtered through the ratings systems of Amazon and others.

So with tens of millions of books crashing against Amazon's shores each year, there's a real chance good books will simply never be read because they never make it through the mass of low rank reviewers/readers without reputations to the inner circle of high rank Amazon reviewers (top 200 on Amazon.co.uk, baby) with opinions that matter.

How does a good writer avoid getting lost like that? I'd say building a reputation with shorts and hob-nobbing with other writers who're prepared to offer them patronage and introduction to the inner rank of influential reviewers, like Pat's for Fantasy or SF Signal for Science Fiction - I'm sure there are similar for other genres.

02-14-2012, 10:42 AM	#39
dadioflex Dyslexic Count Posts: 526 Karma: 5041991 Join Date: Aug 2008 Device: Palm TX, Advent Vega, iPad, iPod Touch, Kindle	All those books require a filter. Traditionally the publisher was the quality filter through which most books did not pass. Then the agent became that filter as publishers gave up the job, allowing agents to do the work for them. There's only one filter left and that's readers. That tidal wave of crap is going to be filtered through the ratings systems of Amazon and others. So with tens of millions of books crashing against Amazon's shores each year, there's a real chance good books will simply never be read because they never make it through the mass of low rank reviewers/readers without reputations to the inner circle of high rank Amazon reviewers (top 200 on Amazon.co.uk, baby) with opinions that matter. How does a good writer avoid getting lost like that? I'd say building a reputation with shorts and hob-nobbing with other writers who're prepared to offer them patronage and introduction to the inner rank of influential reviewers, like Pat's for Fantasy or SF Signal for Science Fiction - I'm sure there are similar for other genres.