Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
It depends on if you are talking about the publishers slush pile and fanfic sites, or book stores. Despite some people's disdain for the publishing industry, they at least filtered out a good bit of the dreck that one now has to wade through at Amazon. Someone thought that those books had enough promise to invest a lot of money actually publishing them. Sure there are people who enjoy wading through the slush pile and fanfic sites. Me, I would like to be able to say, only show me books by major publishers, or books by authors who are on my favorite author list.
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Takes me about 20 seconds to dismiss books as dreck. I've never been a "wader"... even
before the days of easy self-publishing. Cream rises, good things get talked about, voices carry--however you want to say it. The path to finding good books to read isn't any more perilous or unnavigable than it ever was.
I've said it before: very few people pick out books to read at complete random, site-unseen; before, during, or after the self-publishing explosion. Avid readers rarely grabbed a book out of hat and started reading. And of the ones that did, I doubt very highly that they've ever taken comfort in the fact that a book they picked with that method, and ended up hating, was at least competently written.
There's always been an ocean of dreck, but nobody's ever been forced to dive in it to find books.
If you only want to see books by major publishers, then browse the major publishers' websites. Problem solved. Go to your favorite authors' websites to see if their latest has been released yet. Talk to your friends. Follow people whose reading tastes you share or admire on Twitter. Hit up a book blog. Check out a "what else are you reading" thread on online forums.
There's never been a time when absolute potluck was going to get you a high rate of return on new favorite authors/books, so I fail to see why people always bring up the "more crap than ever" lament.
Never in the history of the planet has there been so many tools (easy, efficient and powerful tools) at reader's disposal to find great books to read without having to leave their homes. Yet many people want to complain that good books don't fall out of the sky into their laps any more. Well guess what? They never
did. Get over it.
EDITORS NOTE: Although my post was in response to pwalker8's post, please understand that with the exception of a couple, most of my "you"s were entirely rhetorical.