Quote:
Originally Posted by Mivo
You can't relay on reviews, because you can't evaluate the source usually.
|
Sure I can. I do it all the time. I have personal history with friends and acquaintances on Goodreads and in real life whose reading preferences, and likes and dislikes I've become intimately familiar over the years. I have a nearly constant live feed of what people whose tastes I've come to respect (readers and authors alike) are reading that I can tap into at any time I want. Anonymous reviews are pointless no matter how a book was published. So I don't rely on anonymous reviews. I rely on the reviews/opinions of people who are known to me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mivo
Why, precisely, should I jump through hoops when I can buy a book from an established publisher (there are many more than five) in the secure knowledge that it was properly edited and meets certain standards (literary and otherwise) to even get published?
|
Because as I mentioned above, "basic standards" is no consolation when you don't like a book. Competence is no guarantee you're going to like it. Nobody ever said; "Man, that book sucked. But I'm glad I read it because it was so, so, very competently edited."
The "hoops" you speak of quite are huge. You don't even have to jump though them. You merely have to pay attention and look where you're walking while you stroll through them. Much like readers have always done. No one has ever, in the history of book-reading, been able to choose books at utter random and have a high degree of confidence that they would be satisfied with those random picks. There has always been self-vetting and personal research needing to be done in order to find satisfactory books to read. They never did fall out of the sky from traditional publishers into the laps of readers to be loved.