Quote:
Originally Posted by laurla
I just want to read books with well developed characters and stories. My biggest complaint is feeling like I skimmed a book, even though I haven't, because the author didn't develop the characters or the story-line. I don't care if they are indie or not - but it is true that you're much more likely to find a crap book by a NEW indie author than an established publishing house author.
But we all want our cake and to eat it too - we want the professionalism of a well executed published book but we don't want to spend the money on them in the digital world. We've all discussed how we have limits on how much we will spend for an author - it varies on our experience with the author, but I think we've all pretty much said that we wouldn't go above $5 or $6 even for an auto-buy author we love. But the professionalism we want costs money for the author or publisher and of course they're going to pass that on to us. I'm not saying that I agree with the pricing strategies of the big houses, I'm just saying that a lot of readers stopped buying ebooks over a certain price and what's available under that price tends to be not very well edited indie books - in a way, we created our own monster. But I also believe that's changing because we've decided we want to eat our cake and learned that it doesn't taste very good... so now we're starting to get pretty picky about the cake we want.
I'm more picky than I was a year ago, but I won't refuse to buy a book just because they are or aren't an indie or were or weren't published within a certain time frame. I am just more careful to look at reviews, samples, etc before I do the one-click. I had more good reads last year than bad - but I've also already said I am not very picky when it comes to books. I can over-look a lot, especially if I am drawn into the book with the characters. I've never been a huge historical fan, so truth be told, accuracy isn't high on my list because I don't know that I'd ever know the difference. Language would probably only throw me if I wasn't into the story and characters to begin with. I might notice it, but it wouldn't throw me out of story if it was a good one. I know many of you say you wouldn't be able to get into the story if the language was all wrong or there were too many anachronisms, so I'm probably showing my 'historicals ignorance' by saying that only if those things were hugely obvious right from the start would they keep me from continuing to read. And by obvious I mean the character walked into the room saying "whazzz up, homies??"  Something like 'storage building' wouldn't do it to me because, well, I just wouldn't know better  Maybe if I'd been reading historicals all along, I would, but since I haven't, the anachronisms would have to be glaring for me to be thrown from the story...
I think I lost the point of my post somewhere along the way... I think I was trying to say that I'll give a certain amount of leeway to any author as long as they have written a well developed story with characters I can feel. I've had questionably edited books with characters and a story I really liked and I've read professionally edited books that I hated because there was just no depth to the story. I'm more likely to get the stories I want, of course, from a book that's been edited but I'll probably still take my chances on indies here and there. |
You pretty much summed up everything I would say! I would add that in the past I have spent good money on published books and found some of them lacking just as much as a freebie or indie book too. It's like everything else, there's just such a glut in the market that we need to be more careful, look over ratings etc.
Oh, and you asked about Catherine Bybee, I read 'Not Quite Dating' and gave it a 3. Was just a 'meh' book/author for me.
Now, back to deals.
Free: Faster Longer by Colleen Masters. This is book 3 in the series, the first 2 have been freebies in the past as well.
$.99 All 3 books in the 'Rook and Ronin' series by J.A. Huss. I thoroughly enjoyed these. Tragic, book 1, had been free.