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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.
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The test cases are fascinating, that much is certain. Up to this point in your argument, I agree with you. But...
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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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The "mounting evidence",
from my personal experience, is that the majority of self published books I've attempted to read are crap. And I'm astonished to see that in the almost five years I've owned an e-reader, this hasn't changed! It's not that good authors aren't a part of the self publishing trend (I'm reading one right now, in fact), but they're quite often completely buried in a pile of unedited, poorly written garbage that wouldn't even make it to the slush pile of a decent agent or publishing house. People who can't tell a good story, can't write to save their lives, and can't be bothered to pay out of their own pocket for a good, experienced editor think they're going to be the next indie millionaire.
Meanwhile, plenty of good authors, who perhaps got the writing/storytelling and even the editing part right but who aren't natural-born self marketers, are struggling to see success on their own because they've bought into a trend that would have you believe the Big Bad Publisher is ALWAYS the enemy.
I believe there's room for both processes to get a book in front of an audience--whichever route an author chooses. Lemurion nailed it, there are advantages and disadvantages to both ways of publishing.
(Personally, should I ever actually finish the aggravating 90,000 words and counting never-ending-oh-dear-lord-why-did-I-ever-think-this-was-a-good-idea novel currently on my laptop, and should it be good enough to see the light of day, I hope both options are still viable. I suck at marketing myself, and as such, hold no illusions that I'd succeed at self publishing. Given that fact, in order to see success as an indie author, I would have to have enough money already set aside to pay for not only editing, but cover art, a decent quality website, and some sort of advertising or marketing--that's a lot to pay for on my own. Yes, I *could* do these things myself, but it all takes time away from writing, and I'm nowhere near as good at any of these tasks as a good professional in those fields. Just writing a good book is hard enough, I don't want to have to master multiple other careers in order to sell what I write.)