Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
The issue isn't about indie success or failure or how it comes about but that the test cases are piling up. Newcomers and veterans can both make their own strong cases for going indie, whereas the traditionalists are still holding up the same hoary old excuses for why they are "indispensable".
The vast majority of readers don't care who publishes the book; big publisher, small publisher, or indie. They care about the story and, maybe, the author.
Pretending indie titles are somehow inferior and not worth consideration is going to be an increasingly harder position to uphold in the face of the mounting evidence.
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Yes, there are more and more indie successes as time goes on, and it's inevitable that there will be more.
Indie books are not intrinsically inferior to commercially published books, nor are they intrinsically superior. However, they are much more variable in quality.
The very ease of indie publishing means that there are a lot of really bad indie books out there, just as there are a lot of really good indie books out there. The big issue for many people is that it can be hard to find the good ones without being swamped in the sheer volume of books published every day.
Commercially published books have a higher "floor" when it comes to quality. The really badly written ones don't make it to publication, and most grammatical errors get caught before publication. In the indie world, both these kinds of books can, and sometimes do, get published as is.
Good indie books are just as good as the best commercially published books. There's no question.
Indie publishing is just as viable a route to success as commercial publishing, but it entails more work for the author, and a smaller proportion of indie books reach the minimum level of success that can be expected from a commercially published book.
Indie publishing has democratized the industry. Anyone and everyone can get published. This is a good thing, because it opens publishing to whole of society, so that great books that would otherwise be overlooked by the industry can be published. However, the flip side is also true, really bad books that have no redeeming values can also be published in exactly the same way.
The truth is there is no one solution for all authors. Some will thrive as indies, others need the assistance commercial publishing provides. There are advantages and disadvantages to both forms of publication, and none of us can say which is best for every other person.