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Given that the industry dynamic is shifting, change is inevitable. People now have access to more books than they would have ever thought possible. And it has happened in an incredibly short time.
Whenever you have change at such a rampant rate, there will be people praising it (early adopters), and traditionalists claiming that the world is coming to an end. Neither are right or wrong. It's just a matter of differing opinions.
However I have to agree that due to the ease at which works can now be self published there is a lot of work flooding the market that should have been thoroughly edited and proof read before publication.
I think that there are enough people out there willing to take a shot at a new indie book and provide a review, which then allows those of us who are more likely to act on recommendations to give it a try. By way of word of mouth the indie book may then take off and see successful sales growth. Or it may plummet into obscurity.
What I feel needs to happen is a natural shift/growth in the platforms through which we purchase books, so that the end users (Us the readers) can contribute to fixing the flaw in the system. Something along the lines of a better tiered rating system. At the moment we generally only see a 1-5 star rating to a book, be it on Amazon, smashwords etc. What if this changed to the following;
Story: 1-5 stars
Formatting and Grammar: 1-5 stars
Overall: An aggregate of the two.
Each book would be given a rating based on, did the reader enjoy the story, and whether there were issues with the spelling or layout. This would then be clearly visible to purchasers. The beauty of ebooks is that they are a living breathing beast. They can be edited and re-uploaded. I believe most serious authors would revisit their work if they were getting reviews of 4-5 stars for story but only 1-3 for formatting.
Thoughts?
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