Quote:
Originally Posted by dickloraine
How should we find a not published book, that has won prizes? How do we know, which books would have been great, if we don't know of them, because... They were not published? What thompe askes for is in itself not answerable, especially if every book that is trad pubed after it was self published counts for the trads too...school books and maps (who now has a small imprint for high quality fantasy).
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Actually you can find books that have placed or won prizes that were never published. The CWA Debut Dagger Award (and the shortlist) is just ONE of many awards for unpublished works. In some cases, the winner of that award was picked up by a publisher. In other cases, the book was not. Before I self-published, I used to enter such contests (after careful vetting to make sure they weren't nonsense contests designed to bilk the writer.) MOST contests of this nature had a publishing contract for the winner, but there were many times when a book did not end up being published (sometimes because those running the contests ran out of funds. Sometimes the contract was not that good so an author opted to use the win to get an agent and try for a better deal.)
Kobo ran a contest last year for a romance publisher/contract. The winner was to be published by that publisher. That does not mean that the author accepted the contract (I don't know if they did or didn't).
So it is actually answerable to some extent if you went on a writer's forum and asked the writers about various awards they may have won or "almost contracts." I have at least 3 short stories that were under contract that were never published (usually because the magazine ran out of money or the anthology was dropped. In one case, the publisher died.) I think I have published all three of those short stories now, so they are in fact published, but you get the idea.
This is not to take away from the argument for or against self-publishing or for or against better search engines. I do not think Amazon will improve the search engine by allowing exclusions for the simple reason: they make quite a bit of money from indie sales. It may be more of a growth market (from a revenue standpoint) than trad books because Amazon has more control over royalties, advertising, payouts and the like with indies.
I do feel that self-publishing has fallen out of vogue with many readers, especially compared to five years ago.