Quote:
Originally Posted by ReadingManiac
[I'll have to do it on another thread, but I want, sometime, to vent my spleen about self-pubs and indies getting mixed in among the books published by traditional publishers, on various lists of marked down books.]
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Some of the best books I've ever read are indies, though keeping a rule to only post ones you've read is very reasonable. There's a lot of crap to wade through to find the good ones.[/QUOTE]
First, the quote that ReadingManiac was replying to, was from me. Sorry about my goofed-up formatting.
Yes, the rules on MobileRead regarding posting indies/self-pubs, go a long, long way toward keeping the crap off of the
threads which have those rules. I'm grateful for those rules. However, I was specifically talking about the mixture of indie/self-pubs (I actually don't know the difference) with those published by traditional publishers, "on various lists of marked down (e)books."
Yes, maybe I was painting with too broad a brush. But you have to admit that there are far, far less bad ebooks published by traditional publishers than there are by indie/self-pub businesses. I would rather see a marked down ebook list that omitted indie/self-pubs altogether, even if it meant possibly missing out on some good (or great!) indie/self-pubs. It is just too time-consuming to do even a cursory vetting of each marked down indie/self-pub. But I think that such a situation is only hypothetical--I do not know of the existence of such a list.
"Well, just take a look at the ratings of the indie/self-pubs, to find out how good they are," someone might say. Well, first, if the number of ratings is less than, say, 20, the ratings are just not going to be reliable. And it seems like indie/self-pubs just don't get as many ratings as books by traditional publishers do. Second, call me paranoid, but I just don't trust the ratings of indie/self-pub books as much as I do with the books from traditional publishers. Amazon tries to keep false or illegitimate ratings out of the reviews, but I still can't help but think that some of the indie/self-pub ratings and reviews are coming from Aunt Susie, Uncle Bill, the neighbor's Cocker Spaniel, who knows?
I think that I can skip the venting of my spleen, in the future, about that. I think that I just did it.
