Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I thought it was the opposite - to give the READER an indication that the author met certain minimum standards of literacy  . If everyone gets to put the badge on their book, it's not a standard that means anything, is it? |
That's kind of my point.
A bare minimum standard isn't going to be worth much. Plus the standards committee would be so swamped with submissions that they'd either have to have a huge number of testers (which decreases rigor) or a high price tag for submission (which decreases value).
I mean, I'm an reviewer on Amazon. I get 10-20 review requests from indie authors DAILY. Many of them are even willing to pay for a review, although I don't take money for reviews because I feel it would compromise my ability to review fairly. A standardization board would be facing the same thing, only writ MUCH larger because they'd be The Committee and I'm just some yahoo on Amazon.
One way to mitigate that would be to make the standard stricter, so that works would flunk out faster, ensuring an easier turn-over. Either way, though, I see anything that comes out of this as being high expense, potentially low rigor, and low payoff for both author and reader unless the standard is so widely accepted and so rigorously implemented that it increases sales enough to pay for itself or becomes a financial detriment to NOT have it.
But that's just my opinion.