Quote:
Originally Posted by Atunah
Yes this.
I have to say I tend to not like to respond to threads like this much anymore as those of us that just have issue for various reasons with self published books are made to feel like we are somehow missing something. Or that we can't deal with choice, or we bow to trade publishers and all that.
I just want to read good and great books. I been reading for a long time and of course those books were all through a publisher. I am one of those that was really exited discovering self published books in the early days of me having a kindle. I have had one since 2008. I am also one that used to enjoy sitting down with a cup of tea and spend some time browsing on Amazon through the newly released stuff by publishing date and in the old days also best seller. That was when best selling was not just top 100, but just another sort option of the all listings. Amazing what I could find in the best selling 1000's and so. Unfortunately, that is gone.
Now this might be because of the genres I love reading and I am looking at, but I cannot browse anymore. There is so much garbage there now that my eyes start to cross after page after page. I read a lot of romance and it is the genre that in the last 1-2 years has had a lot of folks jumping on the band wagon. Its also the genre a lot of scammer like to target. We read a lot of books, we spend the most over other genres. So everyone wants a piece of that pie.
After the scammers came the writers not successful at their chosen genre so they think, oh its just romance, simple to write. They even brag about on sites how they hate it and just slap it up. Then followed those that confuse porn and erotica with romance. Many of them male writers. Yep, I said it. So they slap that stuff into the romance also to not get that adult label from Amazon.
So yes, there is much more garbage coming from self publishers. For a while I got sucked in by the raving stars and reviews on goodreads and amazon for those that at least looked professional. And found many of them just shallow. I guess if one slaps a book up ever 2 weeks, something has to give. So I pulled back a bit from even trying them now.
And there is so much street team gaming going on in romance genres now you just can't trust anything anymore.
What I miss out of now not browsing like that are the back list titles. I would always give priority to a self published book if it was published before by a publisher. There is a huge back list catalog in romance and so I can recall some authors and it always makes me happy when those books come out again. Those to me are proven already so vetting is made easy.
I will still read self published from those authors I already know and if other reader friends happen to recommend something.
I am much more adventurous with publisher books as I can at least have a minimum of quality as far as writing, editing, formatting. I know I'll get pushback on that again and be told how horrible trade published books have been, but it has not been my experience. Maybe its the genres I read, I don't know. Its an overall experience that is mine.
I don't read samples. Never have. I don't like it as I don't like reading partial stories. I just want to open a book get sucked in and read it all the way through. It works for me. I am not limiting myself if I find great books. I can never read all books in my lifetime anyway. So if I can maximize the chance my next read is a good one, the better for me.
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At one point I thought about emailing Amazon about a job. The job would have been filtering the adult stuff out of romance. Two separate genres, two different sets of readers as a general rule. Then I realized it would take a year just to get through the A authors.
You know what I found odd/strange. It was that the authors themselves didn't know how to find erotica unless it was in the wrong place.