Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
I wonder if this isn't a problem more in theory than in fact. I spend a bit of time choosing my next book, usually while nearing the end of my current book, so that by the time I'm finished I have a few books in mind for the next one. I can't recall ever even looking at who published it during this decision process. I don't pick many bad ones.
I scan the reader reviews on Amazon and sometimes on Goodreads and sometimes on Kobo and B&N. I don't let the reviewers pick my books but sometimes I'll let them warn me away from a book. More often I judge by the tone and intelligence of the review than by whether they liked the book. This seems to be pretty helpful.
I also read the online samples at Amazon. The "Look Inside" sample, not the downloadable one. Usually the first few paragraphs tell me a lot.
Sometimes I'll google a book and get a variety of opinions on it, and I'll sometimes search Youtube for reviews.
A lot of the books I choose are from references made in these reviews. Reviewers will often mention other books that I'll look into.
I can't really recall looking at the publisher except in a few instances where I found a badly edited book, usually one that was badly proofed after OCR'ing. I used to proof for Gutenberg and I recognize those mistakes. In most of these cases, maybe all of them, they were done by big publishers. I read a lot of older books and that's who does older books.
I just don't think there's a problem finding good books. I rarely think in terms of avoiding bad books. I think I've begun one book in the past couple of years that was bad enough that I didn't finish it. The guys writing seemed fine and the grammar and spelling were good but the situations just didn't make much sense so I stopped reading it. That book was "The Neon Lawyer" by Victor Methos, published by Thomas & Mercer. I have no idea if they're part of a big publisher.
I have read a few books in the past couple of years that I might not have read if I'd known more what to expect, but none of those were so bad I lament reading them. At worse they were just okay.
I do agree that, at least in principle, having a gatekeeper seems like a good idea. But these days with so many resources available to find good books I'm not sure there's a lot of practical need for someone to cull them and I think there's so many benefits from letting people publish whatever they want that I like things the way they are. Ultimately readers are the only ones qualified pick what we want to read.
Barry
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The biggest set of bad books are in the DIY/Self-help genres. Yes, this includes cookbooks.