[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by moonshot

Simply wrong. At lease it is not getting to complicated.

If by "simply wrong" you mean "iron-clad fact", sure. I can play this game as long as you want, I don't tire of making mincemeat.

My original point was that there should be some way to separate the person who writes for a living from those that write as a 'hobby'.

That's easy enough, for reasons I have already stated; the same methods that worked before self-published books became available. Do not book critics provide useful information? Want to read best-sellers? Read the books on the best-sellers list. What to read books that have good reviews? Read the reviews, and then read those books. Want to read award-winning books? Look up the books that win awards.

What do these bad books have in common? They don't sell a lot of copies, they don't get a lot of glowing reviews, and they don't win awards. Want a method to tell good books from bad books? That's available. What you want already exists.

Another analogy, if the singer one did not work to well, could be a 'Footballer' and someone who plays football for fun.

Yes, of course. A person who plays football is a football player, even if they don't play at a professional level. "Joe plays football, but is not a football player" is simply absurd.

I decorated my house but I am not a decorator. Whether I made a professional job of it or a pigs ear of it is not relevant.

If you offer your services as a decorator, you are, in fact, a decorator. You might be a bad decorator and go out of business quickly, but you're still a decorator.

I think most people who have commented here understand what I am getting at, but they don't agree, fair enough, but they are debating the use of the word author rather than the meaning of what I am getting at.

They are responding to your claims that writing a book doesn't make you an author. If you want to rescind that claim, you're free to do so and make some other claim. If you want to claim that we need some method to tell good books from bad (we already have such methods) then why not make that claim instead of the easily-refuted claim that writing a book doesn't make you an author?

If anyone can put words on paper and call themselves an author in the literal sense then maybe those that make a living from it should have the higher title of 'writer' or Professional author.

What would that tell you? How about "best-selling author", "highly-reviewed author" or "award-winning author"? That's information that is already available.

Most professions have a training period and a learning curve and so it should be with anyone who puts pen to paper and then uploaded it to Amazon and uses the word author in the given sense.

Some have requirements which a person must have, but many do not. A doctor or a lawyer have requirements that they must meet, it does not follow that because some professions have requirements that authors must. A musician is still a musician whether they sing at Carnegie Hall or at the local bar. The singer at Carnegie Hall may be a better singer than the singer at the bar, but that is irrelevant to whether or not the person is a singer. If you listen to the singer at the bar and complain that you didn't get the quality you would expect from a singer at Carnegie Hall, that's your problem. There is no barrier to becoming a musician.

An artist is still an artist whether their works hang in the Louvre or in the local coffee shop. Again, the artist with the works in the Louvre is probably a better artist than the artist whose works hang in the coffee shop, but it is still a fact that both are artists.

An author is still an author whether or they top the best-seller charts or they sell few books. While there are jobs that have entry requirements, there exist no such entry requirements for musicians, artists or authors; in fact a great many jobs have no requirements at all. Whether the person succeeds of fails is determined by the market. The better singer will sell the most music, the better artist will sell the most art, and the better author will sell the most books, just as the better baker will sell more loaves of bread.

Is that a fact?

Yes, it is. Few people will purchase a book completely at random, assuming it must be good. People use various techniques to determine if they are likely to enjoy a book.