Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
In non-fiction, there can be and is progress. But I'd be hard-pressed to see how someone is going to write better books than a whole bunch of nineteenth century novelists.
Fortunately, I don't really see today's novelists competing with Dickens and the Brontes. Sometimes I want to live in the nineteenth century, and sometimes I want to see how the world is going today. I will try to locate better books within an era, but I don't start asking myself, who is better, Richard Russo or Anthony Trollope, and pick a book to read on that basis.
Readers of fantasy books might look at it a little differently. But it's a common observation that most sci fi is really a commentary on the author's own world.
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My point is, if your book isn't selling, it probably isn't because people are choosing a public domain version instead of yours, but that people are choosing some other new book instead of your new book. If we suppressed public domain books, it would result in less readers than in people buying more new books. I'm not saying that you need to write a better book than Dickens.