Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
My issue with your narrative is that you still insist that all traditionally published books are inherently better than indies or self-published. Why? You try to say, without technically outright saying it, that only those that used to trade a bag of used books for a new bag of used books are now happily using indies and KU. Ignoring subscriptions and paper books for a second, the payment to the self pubbed author is higher even though the sales price is much lower than trad published.
Your example comparing (ironically) the iPhone vs el cheapo Korean phone with tradpub vs indie is flawed. The only reason there is no cheap iPhones around is, because Apple does not allow any competition. If you refer to Korea on purpose to hint towards Samsung, when you are barking up the wrong tree. While Samsung does make entry level and cheap phones, their high end models are far from cheap and with a healthy profit margin.
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No, you are reading far too much into the example. I speak in generalities not in absolutes. I actually read a number of indies and have several in my favorites list. I said that the indie market is trying to fill the niche that the used book store use to fill. Note, that used book stores filled a lot of roles. You had the people who just wanted generic books of whatever genre they liked (my mother liked romance). It also filled the role of people who liked specific authors, but didn't want to pay full price, or were trying to find backlist books.
Once again, by trying to focus on the trees rather than the forest, you miss the overall point, which is that some people are willing to pay for a known quality, while others just want something that is cheap and works. If I meant Samsung I would have said Samsung. As you correctly note, Samsung actually makes a high end phone which is just as good as Apple's phone. I was talking about the knock offs that you get for free when you sign a two year contract.
As far as traditional publishers being better than indies or self-published, I'm not really saying that. As mentioned before, several indies are on favorites list and I buy a lot of backlist books that are either published via Amazon or self-published. My major focus on tradition publishers isn't on publishers per se, but specific imprints.
While Baen was alive, odds were pretty good that I was going to like at least half the books he published in a given month. Being a mostly SF&F reader during long periods of time, there were specific imprints, like Del Rey, DAW, Ace and Tor during specific time period where the books that were published under those imprints matched my taste quite a bit. For example, the Del Rey imprint still exists, but drifted away from my tastes back in the early 90's after Lester Del Rey died. More than anything, it's about liking the selections of a specific editor.