Quote:
Originally Posted by Rizla
One difference I note between trad-pub and self-pub books is that I never read a trad-pub book where the writing was simply, objectively amateurish at a word and sentence level. I may not like the trad-pub book, find it pointless, long-winded, going nowhere, or whatever (i.e. not my thing), but the basic craft is normally there. Presumably they wouldn't get into print otherwise. (Plus maybe they were edited?) Whereas I've seen a lot of self-pub stuff where the author's prose is execrable. They simply didn't know how to write at the most basic technical level. Obviously not always.
Looking at the two books I cite above, both author's make what are IMO technical mistakes that a good editor might have highlighted, and therefore improved.
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Of course there are very bad self published books. What's the point? You don't have to read them and fortunately that kind of bad is the easiest to spot. As I said, one doesn't read random books. Comparing by the bottom is pretty useless. Who is interested in the worst book ever? The problem is simply one of discoverability. Of course with more books, the problem gets bigger (but it is more a problem for the authors than the readers).