Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
An important point is being missed here. CJ Cherryh can do this and make enough sales of her ebook through her website because she built a reputation through the traditional publishing process. Imagine no book publishing companies and all authors selling ebooks from their own websites. How would you know who to look for, who to buy? How many times would you need to be burned by buying poorly written drivel before you would stop buying from unknown authors?
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The hole in this argument is that there are books published that are, if you'll pardon my brute language, unmitigated crap. I read one recently, it was from a house who normally publish authors I like, this was, as far as I know, a first novel, the subject was good but... it was just crap. I bought it, and read it, and won't read that author again. It was a trade paperback. I recently read an ebook from a first time author, I hated that too, though it fulfilled the same criteria as the pbook I read. The ebook was offered by the author for free, though given the description I'd have probably paid £2 for it, regardless of it being self published. I won't read either author again, but for trying one I am out of pocket £6, for the other... nothing. Guess which model I prefer.
As it happens, that person seems to be getting reasonable feedback on the site I found his book, so while i hated the book, some niche of people seem to like it. I think it was just not well written, I suspect no publisher would have touched it with a barge pole, but the author now has a small readership. I imagine he'll write more, and continue to have a small readership.
If I want to try a new author then I take a risk that they'll actually not be very good and that is the case regardless of whether they are from an established publishing house or not, unfortunately.
There is of course an 'unless' - unless it is an author that is recommended to me. I try new authors 'on spec' (I like the cover, it sounds interesting, et cetera), a few a year. I also try new authors that friends and colleagues recommend. The recommendations from friends do tend to be authors I like. Some of the on spec books I read are rubbish, I don't recommend those to friends and colleagues, the ones I enjoy I do. I truly believe that this is not an unusual system of new authors getting readers, and I really don't think self published ebooks suffer under this systems - or won't, once I convince more of my friends that ebooks are the way forward
(Warning, I think I am going to sound like a snob here). I think the lost business will be to new authors who write books which don't tend to appeal to avid readers. So, 'holiday fiction' huge sellers to people who read one or two books a year, where the author makes a small fortune, for something that (to me), is just pap. I'm not sure how those authors would exist in a mostly word of mouth world, maybe they wouldn't. Now, for me, that is no great loss.
So basically, publishers don't real do anything for me, in an ebook world. Now editors, that is another matter. I wouldn't be surprised to see collectives of editors and publishers working together, maybe even setting up their own epublisher. (At this point I really want to mention ebooks going punk, but I won't).
I also read an interesting post from Charles Stross, who I believe is a member here, on his blog about publishers being very important to authors, due to advances. I don't know the author / publisher side of the bargain, and this I do understand that I only see one side of the story.