Best Selling Authors and Self Publishing

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Or are you going to play the "They didn't use these exact words" card?

Not at all. I'm simply going to point out that not a one of those quotes you posted even hints (let alone exactly states) that traditional publishers provide "no value." In fact, at least one of them recognized/mentioned a valuable service that they DO provide.

What all of them DO suggest (which you seem unwilling to accept/admit) is that they question whether the value traditional publishers DO provide (and everyone here recognizes that they do provide some--regardless of what your reality wants to believe we're saying) is worth the traditional asking price anymore.

I don't know how much simpler I can make it for you. You're arguing with people who aren't saying what you seem to need them to be saying.

The future is not tradpub OR indie; black or white. The future is a hybrid of both--BECAUSE of the choices indie success is providing today. Regardless of "tiers."

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Not at all. I'm simply going to point out that not a one of those quotes you posted even hints (let alone exactly states) that traditional publishers provide "no value." In fact, at least one of them recognized/mentioned a valuable service that they DO provide.

What all of them DO suggest (which you seem unwilling to accept/admit) is that they question whether the value traditional publishers DO provide (and everyone here recognizes that they do provide some--regardless of what your reality wants to believe we're saying) is worth the traditional asking price anymore.

I don't know how much simpler I can make it for you. You're arguing with people who aren't saying what you seem to need them to be saying.

The future is not tradpub OR indie; black or white. The future is a hybrid of both--BECAUSE of the choices indie success is providing today. Regardless of "tiers."

I agree for some traditional is the way to go or more precisely hybrid seems to be the choice of the future.
Now to pwalker, all books on Amazon have the publisher listed. If you are unsure a book will be to your standards, scroll down and look at the publisher. That might help you find books.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Not at all. I'm simply going to point out that not a one of those quotes you posted even hints (let alone exactly states) that traditional publishers provide "no value." In fact, at least one of them recognized/mentioned a valuable service that they DO provide.

What all of them DO suggest (which you seem unwilling to accept/admit) is that they question whether the value traditional publishers DO provide (and everyone here recognizes that they do provide some--regardless of what your reality wants to believe we're saying) is worth the traditional asking price anymore.

I don't know how much simpler I can make it for you. You're arguing with people who aren't saying what you seem to need them to be saying.

The future is not tradpub OR indie; black or white. The future is a hybrid of both--BECAUSE of the choices indie success is providing today. Regardless of "tiers."

This particular strawman seems to have first raised its ugly head in post #65, where pwalker himself wrote:

"The idea that indies are the wave of the future and the tradition publishers, who obviously provide no value and simply suck money from the hard working authors, are going the way of the dinosaur does seem to be the narrative being pushed by the indie fan base."

I replied in thread #70, including as the first three sentences of my post:

"It is not that Trad Pub provides no value. It is the price to authors of obtaining the services that constitute that value. And, unlike the past going back decades, Trad Pubs now have competitors providing these services or alternatives to them."

Good luck!

[dickloraine]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

On the other position that you take, that it's as easy to find good indie books as good traditionally published book. I have to disagree. Not terribly surprising since I've put of more than a few rants on how hard it is to find good books. First, I'm going to talk about fiction only, since non-fiction is a very different kettle of fish.

This is where the publisher as the gate keeper comes into play. For years and years, I found that I liked the majority of the books that Baen publishing put out. That made it easy for me to find new authors. Since Jim Baen died, I find that my tastes don't match the new management quite as much. I do check out their monthly publishing schedule, but the days of buying all the monthly bundles are long gone. It's not as much a matter of quality as taste and quality. I found a number of new authors through Baen. Before Baen, I think Del Ray was the imprint of choice. Perhaps you never found an imprint that matched your taste as well as Baen matched mine.
.

It seems you just found a publisher (a very specialized one) who liked the same books you do. Good for you. I would say, that is what small publishers (or some imprints of big publishers) try.
Of course there are other similar ways. For example: find reviewers with similar tastes to you. That is much easier nowadays, since there are many more reviewers then in the days of only professional critics. Talking and reading about books helps too. Of course there are always people, who give bad recommendations, but most people try to be helpfull and bad recommendation are mostly easy to spot.

I think it is nowadays much more easy to find the next read then ever before. My to be read pile (not physically) only grows.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

The keywords there are "Jim Baen used to". Lots of old-timey editors (who basically held the reins of the publishing world at the time) "used to" do that. But that kind of "mentoring/molding editor/publisher" has been basically extinct for quite awhile now. Where ya been?

John W Campbell Jr , when he was the editor at Analog, mentored a goodly number of authors.
Some made it to the big time.
Some of those are still alive today.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by darryl

This particular strawman seems to have first raised its ugly head in post #65, where pwalker himself wrote:

"The idea that indies are the wave of the future and the tradition publishers, who obviously provide no value and simply suck money from the hard working authors, are going the way of the dinosaur does seem to be the narrative being pushed by the indie fan base."

I replied in thread #70, including as the first three sentences of my post:

"It is not that Trad Pub provides no value. It is the price to authors of obtaining the services that constitute that value. And, unlike the past going back decades, Trad Pubs now have competitors providing these services or alternatives to them."

Good luck!

Nah.

The same little group of posters have been throwing the same strawman out since I first registered.
On thread after thread.
Then they pretend their opponents not only proposed said strawman but defended it.

It gets old, but we keep slapping them down.
Not because they are capable of examining the way the market is changing and reexamining their position, but because new people come to the forum and are exploring all this for the first time.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

On the other position that you take, that it's as easy to find good indie books as good traditionally published book. I have to disagree. Not terribly surprising since I've put of more than a few rants on how hard it is to find good books. First, I'm going to talk about fiction only, since non-fiction is a very different kettle of fish.

This is where the publisher as the gate keeper comes into play. For years and years, I found that I liked the majority of the books that Baen publishing put out. That made it easy for me to find new authors. Since Jim Baen died, I find that my tastes don't match the new management quite as much. I do check out their monthly publishing schedule, but the days of buying all the monthly bundles are long gone. It's not as much a matter of quality as taste and quality. I found a number of new authors through Baen. Before Baen, I think Del Ray was the imprint of choice. Perhaps you never found an imprint that matched your taste as well as Baen matched mine.

Not at all, not at all -- You reading the Baen publication list is the first of my "etc."s. What is your point?

Much though I like Baen, the service they provide me is not that of "gatekeeping the hallowed halls of trad-pub 'literature'". That may be because they aren't the only publisher out there, that may be because they publish a few sub-sub-genres I don't read...

They are a group of opinions I respect.

The second publishers as the gate keepers thing is if a publisher put major marketing muscle into a new author, then the odds were pretty high that they thought the author was a winner. That's how I found Robert Jordon. The first Wheel of Time book came out as a trade paperback in a time when most new books went directly to paperback, so it caught my eye (that's and the cover).

What is a winner, and who defines it? Major marketing muscle, if it is done by people whose opinions you respect, is certainly a valid way to find the good stuff out there, although I would like to point out they also thought 50 Shades of Gray was a winner (and they were right). So even the bestseller lists aren't exactly Gate Keeping.


All you are really saying is that you have ways to filter through the trad-pub dreck to find the cream of the crop.

A third point is what I call the Amazon issue. My preferred method of looking for books is to see what has come out since the last time I looked. Most bookstores that I use to frequent had a new books self in each section and they didn't throw the porn, romance and public domain books in with the SF&F. I find Amazon farming out the maintenance of their book database to anyone who claims to be a publisher to be very frustrating. One can find a lot of pointers on the internet telling would be authors/publishers how to game the system.

So basically you are saying, rather than bookstores staffed by the people who read books, Amazon is staffed by machines that throw everything against the wall and see what sticks... which means your chosen word-of-mouth quality filters are not available.

Some people really like using social media and sites such as goodreads. It's not really my cup of tea. One sees similar issues on some of the threads here. Someone ask for a specific recommendation and mentions some of the books they like. Then people recommend their favorite books, regardless of if there is a match or not. I appreciate that people want to be helpful, but it doesn't get me any closer to books that match my taste.

I'm sorry you find social media inadequate for your needs. I find that goodreads, MR Reading Recommendations, etc. tend to be helpful and people suggest books that they think will match someone's taste.

People suggest books that they like, because that is the point. No one is looking for recommendations for books that people didn't like.

Originally Posted by dickloraine

It seems you just found a publisher (a very specialized one) who liked the same books you do. Good for you. I would say, that is what small publishers (or some imprints of big publishers) try.
Of course there are other similar ways. For example: find reviewers with similar tastes to you. That is much easier nowadays, since there are many more reviewers then in the days of only professional critics. Talking and reading about books helps too. Of course there are always people, who give bad recommendations, but most people try to be helpfull and bad recommendation are mostly easy to spot.

I think it is nowadays much more easy to find the next read then ever before. My to be read pile (not physically) only grows.

^This.

[DiapDealer]

I'm old enough to remember the Golden (pre-indie, pre-ebook, pre-Amazon) Days when competently-written, traditionally-published books that were perfectly matched to my (ever changing) tastes fell from the sky onto my outstretched palms (like manna from heaven) precisely 3 minutes after finishing the book I was currently reading. No effort/research required on my part whatsoever. Man, those were the days.

Nothing like today--where there are no tools at our disposal to easily screen potential candidates. Where you actually have to TELL retailers which book you want and then wait FOREVER for it to arrive and hope like hell it's going to be something you can at least tolerate.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Since I am in a nice mood, here are some SF&F books for you.
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-K...re_2_154606011

I would have never guessed that State of Fear by Crichton was number 2. I thought it was ok, but not his best by a long shot. I've read five of those. Maybe it's just personal preference, but it's pretty unlikely that I'm going to go for a book with a standard Romance cover on it. The Kate Daniels books is about as far down that path as I care to go. For the most part, it also shows why I tend _not_ to base my book purchases on best seller lists.

[dickloraine]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I would have never guessed that State of Fear by Crichton was number 2. I thought it was ok, but not his best by a long shot. I've read five of those. Maybe it's just personal preference, but it's pretty unlikely that I'm going to go for a book with a standard Romance cover on it. The Kate Daniels books is about as far down that path as I care to go. For the most part, it also shows why I tend _not_ to base my book purchases on best seller lists.

First: It is a bestseller list. Those tend to favor newer books. It does not say, that the best Chriton book is on it.
Second, we more or less know only two things about how you choose books: in the past baen and by looking through lists of new books (judging by cover? By title, by reading descriptions?) But we know a lot more how you don't choose them: reviews, bestseller lists, recommendations etc. Frankly, your methods of choosing books seem realy awkward, while you just handwaves very good methods away. Your whole "pile of crap" argument bases on your method of selecting books. It is just not very good and it wasn't very good even in days with fewer books,, but there it was more manageable. I understand that you like your way of choosing books. No problem. But please don't see your way as the only one and base your argumentation on it, if there are perfectly well other ways.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by Phogg

Nah.

The same little group of posters have been throwing the same strawman out since I first registered.
On thread after thread.
Then they pretend their opponents not only proposed said strawman but defended it.

It gets old, but we keep slapping them down.
Not because they are capable of examining the way the market is changing and reexamining their position, but because new people come to the forum and are exploring all this for the first time.

You are of course quite right. I meant to refer only to the particular incarnation of the strawman in this thread. I should have been clearer. I think perhaps we need our own version of Godwin's rule to cover this situation. Something like:

As an online discussion involving Indie v. Traditional publishing grows longer, the probability of a pro-traditional publishing post setting up a strawman involving the total lack of value provided by traditional publishers and/or predicting their demise approaches 100%.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

{...}
The keywords there are "Jim Baen used to". Lots of old-timey editors (who basically held the reins of the publishing world at the time) "used to" do that. But that kind of "mentoring/molding editor/publisher" has been basically extinct for quite awhile now. Where ya been?

Baen, now under Toni Weisskopf's direction, still do it.

I see

Eric Flint & Walter H Hunt
Eric Flint & Charles E Gannon
David Drake & Tony Daniel
Eric Flint & Ryk Spoor
John Ringo & Ryan Sear{John Helfers} (which didn't work well).

However, David Weber & Timothy Zahn is not an example.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Baen, now under Toni Weisskopf's direction, still do it.

I see

Eric Flint & Walter H Hunt
Eric Flint & Charles E Gannon
David Drake & Tony Daniel
Eric Flint & Ryk Spoor
John Ringo & Ryan Sear{John Helfers} (which didn't work well).

However, David Weber & Timothy Zahn is not an example.

That is mostly Flint.
He does a lot of that with the 163x series and especially the GRANTVILLE GAZETTE.

You can also include Patterson's book mill in that old school mold.
Not many more, though.
And it was never terribly common outside the magazines.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'm old enough to remember the Golden (pre-indie, pre-ebook, pre-Amazon) Days when competently-written, traditionally-published books that were perfectly matched to my (ever changing) tastes fell from the sky onto my outstretched palms (like manna from heaven) precisely 3 minutes after finishing the book I was currently reading. No effort/research required on my part whatsoever. Man, those were the days.

Nothing like today--where there are no tools at our disposal to easily screen potential candidates. Where you actually have to TELL retailers which book you want and then wait FOREVER for it to arrive and hope like hell it's going to be something you can at least tolerate.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'm old enough to remember the Golden (pre-indie, pre-ebook, pre-Amazon) Days when competently-written, traditionally-published books that were perfectly matched to my (ever changing) tastes fell from the sky onto my outstretched palms (like manna from heaven) precisely 3 minutes after finishing the book I was currently reading. No effort/research required on my part whatsoever. Man, those were the days.

Nothing like today--where there are no tools at our disposal to easily screen potential candidates. Where you actually have to TELL retailers which book you want and then wait FOREVER for it to arrive and hope like hell it's going to be something you can at least tolerate.

Or you subscribed to Analog Science Fiction/ Science fact and hoped you could survive the wait until the next fix (issue), then make the trip to your postal box (or wait for the Mail Bag to make it to your ship).

I tried the book club route, but the monthly selections varied to widely for my tastes.