Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
However, it only takes minutes (or less) to determine if it's by an author who has absolutely no skills.
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Sometimes it takes me half the book. Or more.
D. H. Lawrence's novels are loaded with trite phrases, and you'll often find them in the first page or two. But one can make too much of that:
An Interview With Evelyn Waugh
Quote:
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D.H. Lawrence was a bad writer. "Philosophically he was rot," Mr. Waugh said, "and as a craftsman he was frightful."
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Despite this, Lawrence
is worth finishing.
Re some of the other stuff in the thread, this seems about right:
Somebody becomes a millionaire overnight and someone else cannot even publish. It is perfectly possible that the quality of work of these two writers is very similar. The same book may have a quite different fate in different countries. Any notion of justice in the incomes of artists is naive.
If a book doesn't get great mainstream reviews, I'm not going to read it. Since the New York Times, Atlantic, etc., don't often review self-published books, I'm likely to miss out on them. Unfair? I suppose, but there are so many books with rave mainstream reviews I've yet to read.
If the topic interests me, and it gets a great review in the New Republic, and by a near-miracle it's self-published, I will read it. Or, more accurately, I will start it.
The miracle will
not be that a self-published book is wonderful, but that mainstream reviewers noticed it. If big publishers are truly going extinct, this will change. However, if I can be allowed a Captain Obvious moment, predicting industry extinctions is an inexact science.