Quote:
Originally Posted by netscorer
I think that if authors can post their books on open portals, more people may notice them and start encouraging them to produce better works. Very few aspiring writers dream right away of earning money from their work. Most simply want the recognition of their talent, want to bring their ideas to the world around them and going through the publishing house sieve may be too difficult a test to pass by the starting author.
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But they can do that now. And they do. And it hasn't put publishers out of business, yet, for all the reasons that have been pointed out in this thread.
If you're looking to portals to filter the content, Amazon is a bad example. Most of the information that anyone pays attention to on Amazon comes from the publishers. Or it comes from professional review sources who get the books, synopses, and teasers from the publishers. Most people only hear about the book because the publisher advertised it, or because it had a nice display in a bookstore. That display, of course, was produced and printed with advertising dollars from the publisher. It also got placed there because the publisher gave a financial incentive to the bookstore to use their valuable floor space.
If you're thinking that user-generated content will take care of separating the wheat from the chaff, that's probably not going to work either. When somerandomsite.com becomes the vehicle by which most people choose their books, there will be a lot of incentive to game the system. It happens now. Epinions, cnet, Digg--every one of them has been astroturfed into uselessness. The user comments on Amazon are faked on a regular basis. It just isn't going to work.
I disagree about the motivations of most beginning writers. Many, yes, are willing to follow the long road of gaining recognition through their talent, because they simply
have to write. But a great, great many start out firmly convinced that all they have to do is throw some words together and they will suddenly get discovered and become famous and influential. They don't want to write, they just want to be writers.