Self-published books

[tompe]

Originally Posted by darryl

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?

Of course they are not missed if they were not submitted to traditional publishers.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by latepaul

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.

The problems with Amazon's search (I mentioned many problems in another thread) is you cannot filter enough to make it really useful. And as you say, more crappy self-published books are going to be mixed in with the results you want and thus, searching is going to get worse and worse.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by tompe

Of course they are not missed if they were not submitted to traditional publishers.

I disagree. Traditional publishers offered only the most exploitative terms at a time when there was no realistic alternative. Even now, they won't offer competitive royalties on ebooks. And, of course, earlier in this thread it was reported that Piers Anthony has ran into problems with his publisher insisting on taking the copyright for its whole term. When Piers writes future books I wonder whether he will offer it to these particular publishers? And if not, have those publishers missed it. It is certainly arguable that when Publishers behave like this in an environment where self-publishing is not only viable but often preferable, they must take responsibility when they miss out because authors choose not to submit manuscripts to them.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by darryl

I disagree. Traditional publishers offered only the most exploitative terms at a time when there was no realistic alternative. Even now, they won't offer competitive royalties on ebooks. And, of course, earlier in this thread it was reported that Piers Anthony has ran into problems with his publisher insisting on taking the copyright for its whole term. When Piers writes future books I wonder whether he will offer it to these particular publishers? And if not, have those publishers missed it. It is certainly arguable that when Publishers behave like this in an environment where self-publishing is not only viable but often preferable, they must take responsibility when they miss out because authors choose not to submit manuscripts to them.

Your claim was:

And you will not find really good books if they have been "filtered" out altogether, as many of them have been under traditional publishing.

If they can be considered to be filtered out they must have engaged with traditional publishing.

So, no example given as I suspected was the case.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by tompe

Your claim was:

If they can be considered to be filtered out they must have engaged with traditional publishing.

So, no example given as I suspected was the case.

To be fair, it's probably near impossible to find a novel which was submitted and rejected as the information isn't available - Much better sales pitch to say you have decided to self-publish for any reason other than "no one liked it"

So the next best is the novels we know about that were submitted many times before finally being accepted, the most famous I can think of from the top of my head would be Dune & Harry Potter, I suspect people can add quite a lot to the list.

I'm sure traditional publishing has turned down many novels over the years, I'm equally sure that my life is completely unchanged because of it.

My main take from this discussion is that a number of people want a flag for self-pub/trad-pub so they can avoid it. Sure, some people want to avoid self-pub, some want to avoid trad-pub and others couldn't care less.

Just for info, I pretty much only read trad-pub, partly for reasons upstream but mostly because SF Gateway have re-released so much backlist SF that I want to read that by the time I catch up (if ever) this should all have become a non-issue.

[DiapDealer]

I just want to read. My book finding/vetting process allows me to pretty-much ignore a book's path to publication altogether (I don't, of course, but it's typically reduced to a trivial interest). I've never been a random reader, so the odds of me pulling something at random out of the pile (or even the genre) that I like (or hate) isn't relevant at all. The odds of pulling something "competent" out of the slushpile are even more meaningless. I feel I'm rather agnostic about it all (except when people try to assign some sort of universal truth to their personal experience with self-published books).

I'm no longer even "pleasantly surprised" when a self-published book I really like finds its way in front of my eyes. I was looking for a good book when I found it, after all. And I've always found that to be a labor of love (just like the struggle of finishing a complex/difficult book that turned out to be worth the effort in the end).

And try as I might, I can't for the life of me remember this golden age of fantastic-books-I-love-falling-out-of-the-sky-into-my-lap that others seem to imply existed before self-pubbed books ruined everything.

Nobody HAS to read self-pubbed books (and anybody who says they can't identify one after glancing at the book details isn't being very honest), so what's the big deal? Read 'em or don't. Just don't suggest your reasons for not doing so are any more universally objective than those that do (and vice-versa; self-pub readers).

In my opinion, "I do/don't read self-pubbed books" isn't really something that needs to be said (unless directly asked) in the first place. Just read. Doing so is just as easy as it always was.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by tompe

Your claim was:

If they can be considered to be filtered out they must have engaged with traditional publishing.

So, no example given as I suspected was the case.

MikeB1972's point is accurate. It is not something that easily lends itself to providing examples.However, some are to be found in simple Google seaches and in articles like this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronald...l?ir=Australia

It is quite apparent that traditional publishing historically rejected the vast majority of the works submitted to them, and quality was not the main criterion. Given this it is quite inevitable that many good and worthy works were rejected. Asking for examples is simply an attempt to deny the obvious in these circumstances, given that the vast majority of these works will never come to light.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

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.

Okay, I'm not talking about adaptations of existing works.

Something which I have always found to be of somewhat, um, variable quality (to be fair, mostly book ==> movie).

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Okay, I'm not talking about adaptations of existing works.

Something which I have always found to be of somewhat, um, variable quality (to be fair, mostly book ==> movie).

Moving the goalposts, how very dare you

The Marvel novels were pretty good, either new stories or very loose adaptations of existing storylines.

I'd agree book/movie adaptations aren't normally great.

Finding superhero novels that weren't based on existing comic books is probably tricky due to identifying them. Mel Odom's F.R.E.E.Lancer books were based on a role playing game (Won't see those as ebooks as the rights will have disappeared along with TSR though).

Mostly you have a problem of what you class as a superhero novel though. You can't just use superhuman abilities or the entire Urban Fantasy genre probably gets counted, along with genetically/technologically modified characters. You could easily include Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Spider and a ton of other material dating back to the 50's. Do they need to have some superhuman abilities - If so explain Batman .

I'd have to scan my paper books to try and pull out any old ones.

Off the top of my head for new characters you have :-
Larry Correia's Grimnoir series.
Kelly Meding's Metawars Series
Christopher L Bennett's Only Superhuman
Brandon Sanderson's Reckoners Series
Kathy Reichs' Virals (Not read it)
G T Almasi's Shadowstorm Series
Myke Cole's Shadowops


Not sure if these should be classed
Steven Gould's Jumper series
Deborah Christian's Mainline
Peter Clines Ex-Heroes

And err... stuff that should be but isn't
Robert Heinlein's Friday
Jennifer Estep's Bigtime series - Sort of a cross between superheroes and sex in the city, seemed to go on about shoes a lot, never read past the first book - Probably not what you are looking for .

I'm assuming we can't count Frank Herbert's works but he had a lot of para/super human abilities in most of his books, just dropping this in because classifying this is hard, everything seems to slide off into either SF or Urban Fantasy

What self-pub ones would you recommend BTW

[Cinisajoy]

If Kathy Reichs' Virals are anything like her Temperance Brennan books, don't bother trying to read it. That woman has more info dumps than actually story.
2 sentences of the story, at least 3 long paragraphs of detailing every little thing.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by darryl

MikeB1972's point is accurate. It is not something that easily lends itself to providing examples.However, some are to be found in simple Google seaches and in articles like this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronald...l?ir=Australia

It is quite apparent that traditional publishing historically rejected the vast majority of the works submitted to them, and quality was not the main criterion. Given this it is quite inevitable that many good and worthy works were rejected. Asking for examples is simply an attempt to deny the obvious in these circumstances, given that the vast majority of these works will never come to light.

Good and worthy? I asked for "really good" books. I am talking about price winning books, and so on. Give me some titles of these really good books that was missed by traditional publishing.

The things is that even if a really good book is not right for every publisher so some publisher might turn it down it is the case that the editors will recognize a really good book and not miss it. And if it fits in there plans they will publish it.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by tompe

Good and worthy? I asked for "really good" books. I am talking about price winning books, and so on. Give me some titles of these really good books that was missed by traditional publishing.

The things is that even if a really good book is not right for every publisher so some publisher might turn it down it is the case that the editors will recognize a really good book and not miss it. And if it fits in there plans they will publish it.

The corporations today aren't interested in anything under 200 pages, no matter how good it is. If you think of all the classic books that are taught in schools now that would be rejected under that silly pagecount requirement that should give you an idea of what we are losing out on. Or would have done if writers didn't have more choices. All the corporations care about is money, nothing else matters to them. They don't even employ proofreaders anymore, or if they do they are bargain basement ones, or English isn't their first language.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by tompe

Good and worthy? I asked for "really good" books. I am talking about price winning books, and so on.

"Really good" and "prize winning" are not actually synonyms.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

"Really good" and "prize winning" are not actually synonyms.

Yes, but that's a whole 'nother discussion...

Shari

[DiapDealer]

The whole thing tompe's reaching for is whole 'nother discussion, IMO.

"Find me something that I will never admit you've found!"