Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
Quite right. No one, on either side of the discussion, has seriously argued on this thread that "self-published stuff is all garbage". Not even DiapDealer, who used it to illustrate a different point.
It seems to be common ground that without a gatekeeper there are a lot of self-published books which most of us would classify as garbage. Just what percentage, who knows. IMHO it is also true to say that there are a lot of self-published books which are not garbage. However, some clearly disagree with me on this, taking the view that there are only a small percentage of self-published books which are not garbage. DiapDealer clearly finds it amusing that some who take this view seek to justify it by excluding certain categories of self-published books. In the end it doesn't matter that greatly. Clearly even those who take the most extreme view acknowledge that there are self-published books worth reading.
Some posts say or sometimes imply, intentionally or otherwise, that it is a terribly onerous and time consuming task to find good Indie/Self-Published books. So much so that they prefer to stick to established traditional publishers. My personal experience is that finding good self-published books is neither terribly onerous nor terribly time-consuming. If your experience is different, I have no problem with it. Though I do believe you are missing out needlessly.
In replying to Mivo earlier I said I agreed with DiapDealer's #19, and therefore did not seek to repeat the points made in that post. But I find this paragraph particularly apt:
And this:
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At one time, back in the day, before all the publishers consolidated into a few mega corporations, quite a few publishing houses had a specific selection criteria, a voice if you will, that meant that, if you liked that criteria, then you liked most of the books that publishing house put out. Baen publishing was the most recent example, though it's voice has changed quite a bit since Baen died. It's been a while since I bought every baen monthly ebook bundle.
Tor publishing has a fairly consistent voice as well. I suspect this voice is what people are talking about when they talk about using publishers as a filter. So someone who is a fan is thinking Tor publishing, not Holtzbrinck, the parent company. I think if you think of it in that manner, the idea of a filter makes more sense.