[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

On the other position that you take, that it's as easy to find good indie books as good traditionally published book. I have to disagree. Not terribly surprising since I've put of more than a few rants on how hard it is to find good books. First, I'm going to talk about fiction only, since non-fiction is a very different kettle of fish.

This is where the publisher as the gate keeper comes into play. For years and years, I found that I liked the majority of the books that Baen publishing put out. That made it easy for me to find new authors. Since Jim Baen died, I find that my tastes don't match the new management quite as much. I do check out their monthly publishing schedule, but the days of buying all the monthly bundles are long gone. It's not as much a matter of quality as taste and quality. I found a number of new authors through Baen. Before Baen, I think Del Ray was the imprint of choice. Perhaps you never found an imprint that matched your taste as well as Baen matched mine.

Not at all, not at all -- You reading the Baen publication list is the first of my "etc."s. What is your point?

Much though I like Baen, the service they provide me is not that of "gatekeeping the hallowed halls of trad-pub 'literature'". That may be because they aren't the only publisher out there, that may be because they publish a few sub-sub-genres I don't read...

They are a group of opinions I respect.

The second publishers as the gate keepers thing is if a publisher put major marketing muscle into a new author, then the odds were pretty high that they thought the author was a winner. That's how I found Robert Jordon. The first Wheel of Time book came out as a trade paperback in a time when most new books went directly to paperback, so it caught my eye (that's and the cover).

What is a winner, and who defines it? Major marketing muscle, if it is done by people whose opinions you respect, is certainly a valid way to find the good stuff out there, although I would like to point out they also thought 50 Shades of Gray was a winner (and they were right). So even the bestseller lists aren't exactly Gate Keeping.


All you are really saying is that you have ways to filter through the trad-pub dreck to find the cream of the crop.

A third point is what I call the Amazon issue. My preferred method of looking for books is to see what has come out since the last time I looked. Most bookstores that I use to frequent had a new books self in each section and they didn't throw the porn, romance and public domain books in with the SF&F. I find Amazon farming out the maintenance of their book database to anyone who claims to be a publisher to be very frustrating. One can find a lot of pointers on the internet telling would be authors/publishers how to game the system.

So basically you are saying, rather than bookstores staffed by the people who read books, Amazon is staffed by machines that throw everything against the wall and see what sticks... which means your chosen word-of-mouth quality filters are not available.

Some people really like using social media and sites such as goodreads. It's not really my cup of tea. One sees similar issues on some of the threads here. Someone ask for a specific recommendation and mentions some of the books they like. Then people recommend their favorite books, regardless of if there is a match or not. I appreciate that people want to be helpful, but it doesn't get me any closer to books that match my taste.

I'm sorry you find social media inadequate for your needs. I find that goodreads, MR Reading Recommendations, etc. tend to be helpful and people suggest books that they think will match someone's taste.

People suggest books that they like, because that is the point. No one is looking for recommendations for books that people didn't like.

Originally Posted by dickloraine

It seems you just found a publisher (a very specialized one) who liked the same books you do. Good for you. I would say, that is what small publishers (or some imprints of big publishers) try.
Of course there are other similar ways. For example: find reviewers with similar tastes to you. That is much easier nowadays, since there are many more reviewers then in the days of only professional critics. Talking and reading about books helps too. Of course there are always people, who give bad recommendations, but most people try to be helpfull and bad recommendation are mostly easy to spot.

I think it is nowadays much more easy to find the next read then ever before. My to be read pile (not physically) only grows.

^This.