Quote:
Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
Non-indies publish with Smashwords as well. Several small publishers publish there (Gemma Halliday Presents is one and there are a couple of fantasy publishers too). Also, this was Smashword's thread--I hate to see mobileread regulars to be overly...well, how about "a tad rude" to visitors, especially on their own thread. Everyone on this forum knows very well that there are some issues with indie publications. It's an easy target. I don't think anyone, including Smashwords, is in denial about it, so it's simply not necessary to go around pointing it out at every opportunity. That wasn't the purpose of the thread--he simply mentioned one possible advantage of being indie (whether we take advantage of those advantages or not!)
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How about this. This is a old saying in the sales world, you only get one chance to make a good first impression. Thus IMPO, it behooves an author to make sure that anything they put out is as polished as they can get it.
More to the point of the thread, because of the normal release cycle for name authors (typically Spring and Fall), Summer is when I tend to try out new authors and genres. This summer I've tried authors like Brad Thor, Elizabeth Peters, Holly Black, Victor Kloss, Shae Ford and Taran Mattaru for the first time. Some are established already, some have been around for a long, long time, some are indies. I tried out other authors as well, but those are the ones that I liked well enough to make it through the book. I've given other authors a shot as well during the summer months over the years.
I tried one other author this week based on the recommendation in another thread. This particular author was an indie, IMPO, badly in need of a good editor. Not because there were misspellings and the like, but rather because the writer simply didn't know how to hang a book together. It was like some guy at a bar telling a story, jumping to the punchline without giving enough lead in to make it funny. There was very little set up and the set up was pretty unbelievable. I did finish the story, mostly because there were little nuggets that made me think he has the ability to be a decent writer, but odds are, I'm not going to buy anymore of his books, because unless he polishes up his writing a lot, it's just not worth the effort for me. That's the danger of iterating in public.