Self-published books

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by darryl

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,

I've already acknowledged that there are authors who can meet the standards but choose not to submit their work to a publisher.

But for a filter to be useful, it dosn't have to be perfect. To get back to avocados, if the grocer grades the avocados into two bins where the first bin has 90% good avocados and 10% bad ones, and the second bin has 10% good avocados and 90% bad ones, then that is still very useful. I can save a lot of time by looking for good avocados in the first bin, even though the second bin might contain some exceptionally nice avocados.

(If we are talking ebooks, then the first bin might have 0.1% good ebooks and 99.9% crap, and the second bin 0.01% good and 99.99% crap, but I am still better off looking in the bin that only has 99.9% crap rather than in the one with 99.99% crap.)

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by darryl

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,

Oh what is her name? Oh yeah. Breena Aubrey. She turned down a 7 figure advance from a big publishing house to self publish. And note that "advance" was in 3 installments over 3 years.
She made that herself in 4 months.
Let's see Russell Blake started out in self-publishing and he is now a co-author with that Clive Cussler.
JA Konrath is a traditionally-published author that went to self publishing.
Traditional publishing had to make Hugh Howey a good deal for him to talk to them.
I know 2 self-published authors that have full time employees.
Shall I continue?

[Cinisajoy]

Oh and at GA Russell,
No 50 shades was never self published. It started out as fan-fiction of Twilight. The author's husband was friends with some people and that is how the book got picked up and became a bestseller.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Oh and at GA Russell,
No 50 shades was never self published. It started out as fan-fiction of Twilight. The author's husband was friends with some people and that is how the book got picked up and became a bestseller.

Yes, never self-published. It started out as Twilight fan-fic called Master of the Universe and then it was rewritten and published by Australian publisher The Writers' Coffee Shop (eBooks and POD), before being picked up by Vintage Books (Random House) where it was revised and republished. It's a good example of what viral marketing can do since The Writers' Coffee Shop had little marketing budget and it was marketed through blogs and social media.

[eschwartz]

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!

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!

Publishers' standards aren't "low".

They are "orthogonal".


What darryl is saying is, that publishers have done a terrible job at being a standard for good/worthwhile books.

...

My main problem with judging a book by it's publisher is, that the only thing being tradpubbed tells me is that it received a baseline competent proofreading to fix grammar and spelling gaffes.
And honestly, I have read one or two tradpub books which I do not believe actually went through a spell-checker!!!

But generally, yeah, that is what tradpub excels at -- turning vomit into proper English. In addition to promotion, which is what the author cares about not me.

The one criterion which is the easiest to filter through without any dependence on tradpub, is the one criterion which I can actually trust them to reliably help me with.
So what do I need them for, exactly?

...

In fact, to point us more generally back at the OP's complaint, that is what usually puts people off of self-published books.
The literary vomit which doesn't even pretend to be actual English.
"[...] books that read like they had been written by a third grade English grammar drop-out [...]"
This is what you won't see in tradpub books. It is also really easy to spot a mile off in self-published books.

[gastan]

I did not mean to suggest, in my original post, that there are no good self-published books. I have read more than one.

I was referring to books that, even with a novel/interesting idea/approach or style, are so badly written, structurally, with literally dozens of misspelled words and misused homonyms and run-on sentences and no paragraphs and incorrect punctuation, or jumbled tenses and mixed metaphors become so gut-wrenching that you can't stomach one more page turn, knowing that there will be more and more and more of everything on the next page that makes you stop to figure out exactly what they mean, so many that you aren't even sure what the heck is happening in the plot anymore but you turn that page anyway because you don't want to think of yourself as an overly critical ass but hate yourself for doing it until you finally give up and go back for a new book which is hard to do even if you use the "have a look inside" option because reading 2 or 3 pages from 30 books to FINALLY find one that appears to have been edited takes a long, long time and when you finally can shout "Hallelujah, I found one" you almost swoon with gratitude.

I certainly did not mean to imply that all traditionally published books were "good" books. But at least you can expect that they received some editing ..... the lack of which is the reason for my acquired distaste for self-published "literature".

It is comforting to know that I am not completely alone.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by gastan

I did not mean to suggest, in my original post, that there are no good self-published books. I have read more than one.

I was referring to books that, even with a novel/interesting idea/approach or style, are so badly written, structurally, with literally dozens of misspelled words and misused homonyms and run-on sentences and no paragraphs and incorrect punctuation, or jumbled tenses and mixed metaphors become so gut-wrenching that you can't stomach one more page turn, knowing that there will be more and more and more of everything on the next page, so many that you aren't even sure what the heck is happening in the plot anymore but you turn that page anyway because you don't want to think of yourself as an overly critical ass but hate yourself for doing it until you finally give up and go back for a new book which is hard to do even if you use the "have a look inside" option because reading 2 or 3 pages from 30 books to FINALLY find one that appears to have been edited takes a long, long time and when you finally can shout "Hallelujah, I found one" you almost swoon with gratitude.

I certainly did not mean to imply that all traditionally published books were "good" books. But at least you can expect that they received some editing ..... the lack of which is the reason for my acquired distaste for self-published "literature".

It is comforting to know that I am not completely alone.

If you will tell me what genre you like, maybe I can lead you to some good authors. Or at least authors that are actually readable because the group I know do care about good writing. I would guarantee less than 3 errors per book.

[eschwartz]

@gastan,

I think I understand what you mean.

Now, I have found that those books are easy to spot *before* you commit to reading them.
Most places let you read the first chapter or two, to get a feel for if you'd like it. DON'T keep reading if you can't take the grammatical torture evident in the first chapter!

But to be honest, I find most of my books through recommendations.
If someone who I trust liked the book, I am confident the grammar is professional, and I don't bother to find out if it is self-published.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

I've already acknowledged that there are authors who can meet the standards but choose not to submit their work to a publisher.

But for a filter to be useful, it dosn't have to be perfect. To get back to avocados, if the grocer grades the avocados into two bins where the first bin has 90% good avocados and 10% bad ones, and the second bin has 10% good avocados and 90% bad ones, then that is still very useful. I can save a lot of time by looking for good avocados in the first bin, even though the second bin might contain some exceptionally nice avocados.

(If we are talking ebooks, then the first bin might have 0.1% good ebooks and 99.9% crap, and the second bin 0.01% good and 99.99% crap, but I am still better off looking in the bin that only has 99.9% crap rather than in the one with 99.99% crap.)

I think this is where we disagree. My own experience is that the relevant difference between traditionally published and self-published books is that there are some really terrible self-published books. There are also some worthwhile books with some very rough edges, which some people can overlook whilst it grates on others. It is this extreme category at the bottom and these books with rough edges that traditionally published books are mostly missing.

The problem with your "filter" as I see it is that you throw the baby out with the bath water. Only a little effort is required to exclude this bottom category and even the "rough edges" category if you so desire, using methods that are logical and have been pointed out in other threads and others posts in this one. This leaves a pool of books of roughly equal quality. However, I suggest that the self-published pool is far larger and growing, and has significantly more variety.

I think you are depriving yourself of the pleasure of reading some great books, but this is of course your prerogative.

[Catlady]

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?

Let's say the supermarket has a second pallet of avocados that are all guaranteed to be fresh and are USDA certified as organic. They cost a bit more, but, hey, they're better quality. You can hunt through the first pallet, if you don't mind handling rotten avocados, and maybe find some decent ones, or you can quickly grab a handful from the second pallet and get down to the business of eating.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Let's say the supermarket has a second pallet of avocados that are all guaranteed to be fresh and are USDA certified as organic. They cost a bit more, but, hey, they're better quality. You can hunt through the first pallet, if you don't mind handling rotten avocados, and maybe find some decent ones, or you can quickly grab a handful from the second pallet and get down to the business of eating.

True. But do you really think traditional publishing does such a good job as curators/gatekeepers that their books equate to the second pallet. If this was in fact the case they may actually get away with charging a premium. Unfortunately, I think the second pallet makes all the claims but in fact the quality is the same as the first pallet but with most of the truly rotten ones taken out. Far better in this case to shop from the first pallet, since the rotten ones are easy to spot and exclude from consideration.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Let's say the supermarket has a second pallet of avocados that are all guaranteed to be fresh and are USDA certified as organic. They cost a bit more, but, hey, they're better quality. You can hunt through the first pallet, if you don't mind handling rotten avocados, and maybe find some decent ones, or you can quickly grab a handful from the second pallet and get down to the business of eating.

I already pointed out that case:

Originally Posted by eschwartz

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.

[fjtorres]

The key disconnect is that some people believe tradpubs select books for quality. That happens not to be the case at all.

Tradpubs select books they *think* will sell.
As eschwartz said, that criterion is orthogonal to the quality criterion.

Which is why the numbers I quoted were *sales* numbers. Indies as a category outperform tradpubs as a unit at what the tradpubs aim to achieve. As a matter of fact, many Indies choose not to stoop to meeting tradpub standards but instead aim for a higher, better standard: writing books they believe in first and then looking for an audience that can appreciate the story.

KKR said it best just last week:

http://kriswrites.com/2016/01/06/bus...usiness-model/

Tradpub criteria is far from the highest standard of quality, primarily because it isn't a standard of quality. Again, check out the Agent's view I linked to earlier. Tradpubs are all about sales. They give lip service to quality and culture but that is just talk.

Come crunch time they will publish ghost-written political "memoirs", adult coloring books, celebrity tattletales, and any other junk that might be in fashion for a week or three.

Once in a while, they will publish a book that is actually good but that is just as likely to be by accident as by intent.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by gastan

I certainly did not mean to imply that all traditionally published books were "good" books. But at least you can expect that they received some editing ..... the lack of which is the reason for my acquired distaste for self-published "literature".

A serious author will use the same services regardless of whether or a book is traditionally- or self-published. Ie they will employ an editor, a cover designer, etc. Only an idiot publishes an unedited book, but unfortunately there are idiots in every walk of life.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by gastan

I pass. I'm done with wasting my time.

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

Not at all. It's why most of the FREE/BARGAIN threads forbid self-published books, unless the book has been read and enjoyed by the person posting about it.

There are good self-published books. But they're a far smaller proportion than for traditionally published books.