Quote:
Originally Posted by Moejoe
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.
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In our hopes, we are rather alike... and it seems our objective assumptions about our future are closer than it would first seem too.
Just one point I want to make... while you are right about most of the things you say, there is an obvious, blatant, and usually unflattering quality to the vast majority of self-published works. The fact that otherwise published books can also look bad and be bad, does not alter the fact that there are very specific ways that the majority of self-published works
are bad... and might well have been fixed, if a published had bothered to pick it up and put time/money into it.
Nor does any of what I said mean that self-publishing a supremely professional book is somehow unachievable, or even difficult. It isn't difficult. But the fact is that it rarely happens for both psychological and commercial reasons that are unlikely to change...
- Ahi