Quote:
Originally Posted by ahi
I'm sorry... I love your stuff, Moejoe, and wouldn't mind it if you were right... but you need only look at the most random assortment of self-published authors to see how amateur efforts well more than 9 times out of 10 result in despairingly amateurish results.
And the size (or even potential size) of any hypothetical community willing to do such work will never be able to accommodate the number of books that can reasonably be published in a(ny) country in a given year.
I'm not saying such communities can't exist... but at this time I cannot take seriously a suggestion that they'll supplant professional publishers... ever.
- Ahi
|
Seriously, the same ratio of 9/10 could apply to any random sampling from the shelves in your local book shop. I keep hearing about editors and proofreaders and agents and how all these are important to produce the high-quality fiction we get now, but I don't see it in reality. I see endless series set in endless copycat worlds.. I see horror that isn't horrific but is more like a soap opera. Science fiction with no science. Thrillers that aren't thrilling and mysteries with no mystery, apart from the mystery of why the central character is still bothering. Literary novels that are no more literary than afternoon TV movies from the 80's. Adventure novels that would make the writers of the A-Team blush they're that stupid. I see badly edited, sloppily proofread and horribly typeset novels all the time. I see horrifically designed front covers where all they've done is photoshopped a woman with a gun onto a backdrop, or hired some hack to paint a spaceship and that's the end of that, slap on a font and we're all done. I pick up books that are so badly written that I can't believe anybody would buy them, or invest time and money in their production. 9/10 is about average whether I source my reading from the web or from the brick and mortar stores.
Listen, I know I'm starry-eyed and definitely a bit of a romantic. And from time to time I have to let the reality in, and when I do let that reality in I know what you're saying is 100% true. The companies will out after the current upheaval, a new status-quo will come into place and a system will emerge that in all likelihood will favour the companies again and not the artists.
But
now, now I can dream, I can do something and make, if not all of what I see for the future, then at least some of it, into a reality. I can put my work out for free, I can be passionate and speak my mind without fear that I'll lose sales, I can produce a cover or two for other writers that may attract more readers for them. All these things I can do precisely because of the upheaval that the web and digital publishing has brought to the brick and mortar world of the trad publishing industry.
For
now I am free. Later on there won't be the same opportunities.