Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
If I see an author has written what I perceive as too many books in a short time period, it's an almost automatic "no" for me--it indicates that someone is simply churning out product without quality control.
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Which can be yet another reason to look at what else the author has written as part of the culling process.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cinisajoy
On your last sentence, I am not so sure about that one. I know an author whose first 6 books were very good. So much so, he was an auto-buy when the next one came out. It was a series but all could stand alone.
He had a good editor. Well written. Then along came book 7, [...]
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It's not as if I use volume of books as a hard rule. Like the pirate's code it is merely a guideline and isn't always to be trusted. Some people's first books are great and would have been well worth the effort. But as a rough indicator that the writer is serious about writing, it's a good start.
Quote:
Originally Posted by David Welch
Interesting question. I would tend to lean towards quality too, but lately I've been reading a lot of old pulp stories/authors. You get guys like H. Bedford Jones or Max Brand, who churned out thirty million words over their lifetime with remarkably consistent quality...makes me wonder if we might see that again in the self-publish age, with so many authors and so few gatekeeprs.. Maybe some of the more prolific self-publishers might reach that level where they can play both sides of the quality/quantity question. Will be interesting to see.
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This is an interesting observation. I immediately thought of several authors that fit this nicely, some even went to the bother of using pen names in order to be able to publish more than traditional publishers were otherwise comfortable with.
One of the problems with the subject of quality vs quantity when brought up where self-publishing is discussed is that people tend to concentrate on the really awful stuff (and yes, there is a lot of it), but at the better end there are various grades of quality. And some authors do good pulp. Lots of fun without any hangups: a one-night-stand in book form.
