Self-published books

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by darryl

Two shoppers went into one of their local stores to pick-up some last minute avocados to have with the family dinner. The store had a large pallet full of avocados. Some were smaller, some larger. Some were hard as a rock and days off being ready to eat. Others had seen better days. A few were even starting to rot. And of course, some were ready to eat and just right. The first shopper spent a couple of minutes at the pallet, inspecting avocados carefully and feeling them for ripeness, selecting 4. The other shopper grabbed 4 avocados at random from the pallet.

Which shopper's family do you think enjoyed beautiful avocados with dinner? And which shopper do you think was to be seen the next day, loudly proclaiming to anyone who would listen that it was impossible to get good avocados and they would never buy another one?

But wouldn't it be better if the grocer didn't mix all the different grades of avocados together in the first place? I'd give my business to another grocer, one that didn't try to trick me into buying crappy avocados by mixing them in with the good ones.

[GA Russell]

I read just last month that The Joy of Cooking was originally a self-published book.

And I read in November that the self-published Fifty Shades of Grey is the best selling book in the US over the past ten years.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

But wouldn't it be better if the grocer didn't mix all the different grades of avocados together in the first place? I'd give my business to another grocer, one that didn't try to trick me into buying crappy avocados by mixing them in with the good ones.

You would rather see ebooks sorted by path to market?

It's easy to do at Amazon, you know.
I've been doing it for five years going on six to make sure I don't give money to the members of the price fix conspiracy. (Or the AU gang.)

What I can't do and is never going to happen is avoid running into their books among those from honest traditional publishers. Doesn't bother me none. If anything, every time I see their prices it helps me remember why I boycott them in the first place.

You've got your shopping criteria, I have mine.
I simply don't pretend mine are anything but personal choice; I don't try to defend them or ask others to join me or change their stores to avoid the inconvenience of facing the reality that BPH titles are not going to disappear overnight to make me feel better.

And neither are indie titles.

In fact, there's at least one Agent who admits indies will continue taking market share away from all tradpubs pretty much indefinitely:

http://annerallen.com/2016/01/publis...evolution.html

13) Indie authors will continue to take market share from traditionally published authors.
If you’re a fan of Hugh Howey and Data Guy and their Author Earnings report (and I am!), you already know that the statistics being handed to us by publishers and traditional organizations like Pew, BookScan, and BISG are way skewed towards the old publishing paradigms.

Indie authors ARE grabbing market share from traditionally published authors and I believe that trend will continue. In fact I think there is a schism in the reading marketplace developing between those readers who will not blink an eye spending $35 for a hardcover first edition book from their favorite author and those who regularly balk at paying more than 99 cents for an indie author ebook—or even a multi-author anthology!

This is especially true in genres like romance, science fiction, mysteries, fantasy, thrillers and graphic novels/comics. The traditional book market is shrinking while the indie market is growing. It’s not difficult to see where the growth is coming from Indie books are eating away at big book publishers. This should become indisputably obvious this year.

The whole article is worth reading: it comes from somebody whose livelihood depends on tradpub and who needs to find ways to remain relevant in an age when the default path to market for newcomers will be to go indie.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by gastan

Has anyone else come to loathe the very idea of self-published books? I began reading them for two reasons. #1: price. They are a great bargain, money-wise. #2: great reviews.

I quickly became disgruntled with poor (or no) editing, misspelled words, bad grammar and general run-of-the-mill, horrendous writing. Who gives these pieces of junk 4 and 5 stars? (Seriously, who would use the word 'waste' when they mean 'waist' and how could ANY reviewer ignore such mistakes?)

Even after dumping (without finishing) several books that read like they had been written by a third grade English grammar drop-out, I preserved, thinking that I was just too critical. But it has come to a point where one of the first things I check is whether the work is self-published or not. If it is ..... I pass. I'm done with wasting my time.

Sorry. Rant over. But seriously, am I the only one?

I read a lot of them.
Some have good editing and production values, others do not.

If you make it a personal policy to only buy authors with a good track record then you will be okay.
If you haven't read an author before, don't buy until there are enough reader reviews to let you know how the grammar and structure are. Usually a bad or mediocre book will get ripped on those issues.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

You would rather see ebooks sorted by path to market?

The filter most useful to me would be one that excluded books by authors that have never been published by a major publisher, or by authors that have not had a book first published before a certain date (such as 1990). But I expect those would not be easy to implement, they would probably require data that the retailer doesn't have on hand. One that excuded all books by authors that did not have another book listed at the same retailer published by one of a user-specified list of publishers might be a workable alternative, provided I could save my list of publishers for future searches.

At the moment I find my best approach is not to use the retailers for discovery at all, but instead to use the publishers' websites and other resources to compile a wishlist of authors I am interested in reading and then to check the retailers for books by those authors.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by darryl

Two shoppers went into one of their local stores to pick-up some last minute avocados to have with the family dinner. The store had a large pallet full of avocados. Some were smaller, some larger. Some were hard as a rock and days off being ready to eat. Others had seen better days. A few were even starting to rot. And of course, some were ready to eat and just right. The first shopper spent a couple of minutes at the pallet, inspecting avocados carefully and feeling them for ripeness, selecting 4. The other shopper grabbed 4 avocados at random from the pallet.

Which shopper's family do you think enjoyed beautiful avocados with dinner? And which shopper do you think was to be seen the next day, loudly proclaiming to anyone who would listen that it was impossible to get good avocados and they would never buy another one?

Well, to fine-tune the analogy, I think shopper #2 probably complained that he would never buy from that store again -- he would only buy from the boutique store over in the city -- a store which only carries pedigree avocados *purported* to be guaranteed 100% ripe.

Of course, even that store had its misses. But when that happened, the store manager told him with a smile that these were special avocados and you are supposed to eat them that way.

Thank you to Cinisajoy, fjtorres and eschwartz for your posts. These Zombie Meme's are indeed well named.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

The filter most useful to me would be one that excluded books by authors that have never been published by a major publisher, or by authors that have not had a book first published before a certain date (such as 1990).

In other words, one that excluded indie authors, except for a narrow cherry-picked list of indie authors who republished their backlist?

...

My book-buying criteria are "good books that I will enjoy reading".
I have gotten plenty of tradpub duds, and a number of excellent indies.

Your proposed filter does not actually serve a useful function -- for me at least -- since it doesn't actually separate the books I will like from the books I won't like.
It separates "books I will like together with books I won't like" from "a different set of books I will like together with books I won't like".

It doesn't even make me less likely to gamble on books I will turn out to end up not liking after all. ( <== Past Experience)

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

In other words, one that excluded indie authors, except for a narrow cherry-picked list of indie authors who republished their backlist?

That is fairly close. Another way to put it is that I want to consider books by authors who have proven they are at least able to meet the minimum standards set by publishers.

I accept that some authors are capable of meeting those standards but choose not to submit their work to a publisher, but I am happy to miss out on reading those authors if it means I can exclude the large numbers of self-published authors that are not capable of meeting even such minimal standards.

[theducks]

Proof readers of Indie can not afford to be Yes (Wo)Men. Call crap editing: CRAP, and send it back for fixing.

Learn what a Homonym is, and kill them.
Learn to spot typ os <-- and other odd
artifacts. <--

[darryl]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

That is fairly close. Another way to put it is that I want to consider books by authors who have proven they are at least able to meet the minumum standards set by publishers.

I accept that some authors are capable of meeting those standatds but choose not to submit their work to a publisher, but I am happy to miss out on reading those authors if it means I can exclude the large numers of self-published authors that are not capablble of meeting even such minimal standards.

This is of course your prerogative. Personally I regard whether something has been traditionally published as a very poor criterion. Big Publishing's track record as curator or gatekeeper is IMHO woeful. So much absolute garbage has been published by them and so much worthwhile excluded. I wouldn't trust them to shop for my avocados!

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by darryl

Two shoppers went into one of their local stores to pick-up some last minute avocados to have with the family dinner. The store had a large pallet full of avocados. Some were smaller, some larger. Some were hard as a rock and days off being ready to eat. Others had seen better days. A few were even starting to rot. And of course, some were ready to eat and just right. The first shopper spent a couple of minutes at the pallet, inspecting avocados carefully and feeling them for ripeness, selecting 4. The other shopper grabbed 4 avocados at random from the pallet.

Which shopper's family do you think enjoyed beautiful avocados with dinner? And which shopper do you think was to be seen the next day, loudly proclaiming to anyone who would listen that it was impossible to get good avocados and they would never buy another one?

Thank you to Cinisajoy, fjtorres and eschwartz for your posts. These Zombie Meme's are indeed well named.

Obviously both, I mean all avocados come from the same type of plant henceforth they are alike.

Note, I am teasing, I know it is the first shopper.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by darryl

This is of course your prerogative. Personally I regard whether something has been traditionally published as a very poor criterion. Big Publishing's track record as curator or gatekeeper is IMHO woeful. So much absolute garbage has been published by them and so much worthwhile excluded. I wouldn't trust them to shop for my avocados!

If publishers' standards are so low, all the more reason to try and avoid books by those authors who can't meet them!

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by theducks

Proof readers of Indie can not afford to be Yes (Wo)Men. Call crap editing: CRAP, and send it back for fixing.

Learn what a Homonym is, and kill them.
Learn to spot typ os <-- and other odd
artifacts. <--

I have attempted to help some authors by proofreading. Some were easy. Others were quite literally returned with one page proofread. And the suggestion to go take an English or English as a second language class.

Note: when I review books I will warn of bad writing.

[Cinisajoy]

There is one big published author that I can't tell if she is writing a travel guide, dissertation or a mystery. The third one gets lost.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

If publishers' standards are so low, all the more reason to try and avoid books by those authors who can't meet them!

Does not follow. The assumption implicit in your statement is that where an author is not traditionally published it is because they cannot meet the publishers standards. Which of course has never been correct. In fact, given the exploitative terms in traditional publishing contracts and the availability of a viable alternative now in self-publishing I expect fewer and fewer authors to go the traditional path. Unless, of course, publishers finally adapt, which most have demonstrated a marked inability to do so far,