Self-published books

[specsavage]

The utter greed of tradpub is starting to show among even established authors. Take the following announcement in David Langford's most recent issue of Ansible, for example:

Piers Anthony replied to fans asking about the overdue 40th volume of his Xanth juvenile fantasy series. This and the next, though finished, are not scheduled 'because we ran into a roadblock. The publisher insists on taking life-of-copyright rights, which means I could not recover them until 70 years after I die. My response, after we delete the expletives, is not even over my dead body. So our patience has been exhausted, and we are working toward other publication, with the attendant delay.'

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by specsavage

The utter greed of tradpub is starting to show among even established authors. Take the following announcement in David Langford's most recent issue of Ansible, for example:

What term length was he shooting for?

At 81 years of age he better not wait too long.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by specsavage

The utter greed of tradpub is starting to show among even established authors. Take the following announcement in David Langford's most recent issue of Ansible, for example:

Off topic/on topic/not sure but I saw one of Piers Anthony's books at Dollar Tree today.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by tompe

What did you give examples of?

The examples I wanted was of really good books that publisher had missed. That is a really good book that was submitted to many publisher for a time and nobody picked it up.

You mean like Harry Potter or Lord of the Flies? I doubt there's many people who are still determined enough to keep submitting for that length of time, not when you can just let readers decide if it's worthy or not.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by tompe

Which genres? I cannot think of any genres that the BPH are not publishing.

Hooligan, kung fu, and Hells Angels books were all popular in the 1970s. I suppose you could lump them into "crime" if you wanted to, or "action/adventure," so they're more sub-genres than anything else.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

You mean like Harry Potter or Lord of the Flies? I doubt there's many people who are still determined enough to keep submitting for that length of time, not when you can just let readers decide if it's worthy or not.

No, since they were picked up so they were not missed. The claim was that there was a lot of really good books that was missed by traditional publishing.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by tompe

No, since they were picked up so they were not missed. The claim was that there was a lot of really good books that was missed by traditional publishing.

Really? Those two examples are a triumph of the traditional publishing model? I presume even self-published books which are later "picked up", of which there are a number of well-known examples, including Hugh Howey's acclaimed Wool, were not "missed" by traditional publishing in your eyes.

The fact is that any good self-published book which has not been traditionally published can be regarded as having been missed, either because they were submitted and rejected or because the authors chose not to even bother to submit them. Also, of course, any good books which were self-published and later picked-up by a traditional publisher. And there is a final category we will never know about. Those good books rejected where the author simply gave up, together with the other great books that rejected author never then wrote.

Of course, if you wish to maintain that there are no good self-published books?

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Atunah

Well aware of that. .
I meant I don't read samples to vet books. Meaning, I don't want to read 15 samples just of find one book to read. I don't like reading partial books. Some have suggested samples to see if a book is good. Its just not what I like doing.
Its not part of my vetting process.

I find slush reading to be hard work. And reading illiterate slush just makes me angry. This is not the way I want to spend my leisure time.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by meeera

I find slush reading to be hard work. And reading illiterate slush just makes me angry. This is not the way I want to spend my leisure time.

But by this choice alone you deprive yourself of probably the single best tool for weeding out the absolute garbage. Personally I find that I usually need to read only a few paragraphs of a preview to dismiss the truly terrible. I find the time I spend reading previews to be insignificant. But of course experiences may differ.

I do not agree with your choice, but I do respect it. And given this choice, it is easy to understand your preference for traditionally published books.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by darryl

But by this choice alone you deprive yourself of probably the single best tool for weeding out the absolute garbage.[...]

I do not agree with your choice, but I do respect it. And given this choice, it is easy to understand your preference for traditionally published books.

I don't have a particularly intense preference for traditionally published books. I have a preference for books that have been properly edited and then recommended to me by people I trust, whether that recommender is an editor/imprint I like or a fellow reader whose tastes I share and trust. That is the single best tool in my armamentarium for not just weeding out garbage but finding books I'll love.

Many of my favourite books are from micropresses, which I don't think necessarily qualify for most people's idea of "traditionally published".

[darryl]

Originally Posted by meeera

Many of my favourite books are from micropresses, which I don't think necessarily qualify for most people's idea of "traditionally published".

I agree with you on this. The terms "self-published" and "Indie" are often not used as terms of art, and as used in practice sometimes seem to include smaller and more innovative publishers. There are many publishers outside of the Big 5 and their imprints that seem to be far more innovative and are adapting far better to the new reality. Even some of the Big 5 imprints satisfy this description.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by 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.

There's no accounting for the lack of taste.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by booklover6

I just looked at one in Amazon's top 100 free books. 4 glowing reviews. One said she read the whole thing in one sitting! Supposedly 517 pages. So, wow, must be a fast reader, yeah? I checked the sample. Not very good. Obviously 4 friends reviewed it. Gag me, not even worth getting for free!

That's because some people game the system. You give me a glowing review and I'll give you one. And they also get friends/family to give glowing reviews.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Superhero fiction -- I can't really think of anything tradpubbed AT ALL, other than GRRM's Wild Cards anthologies.

Marvel & DC have both had a huge amount of prose novels published, I remember reading most of the Berkley published ones back in the 90's.
Here's a fairly good list
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ased_on_comics

There have been non comic book adaptations but not as many probably due to a lack of built in fanbase.

[latepaul]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

^Haha.

Executive summary: people look for books in different ways and have different tolerances for quality of grammar, spelling, and plot. Be careful when reading reviews as they aren't always genuine. Some people actually read samples and others feel this is a waste of your time. In the end, if you wait long enough the higher quality, which is subjective at best, tends to continue to be around while the crap or the not desired by many people tends to disappear. Amazon and other companies could do a better job on filtering and ranking search results in a manner that suits the myriad of random tastes consumers have.

Good summary in general but the problem is the crap does not disappear any more. At near zero marginal cost there's no incentive for Amazon to ever remove an ebook from its servers. Even without the "crap" the back catalog of good books is growing at a huge rate. The filtering/search problem is only going to get worse.

It's more of a problem for authors getting noticed than it is for readers though.