Man! I hate self promoted books!

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by lene1949

I don't buy books which offer only 5-10% as a sample, unless that sample is extremely good... I feel the author is not confident his/her book is good enough further into the story.

I saw a book the other day, which had no sample at all...

For books of over 100k words, 5% is enough of a sample to know if (1) you like the writing style and (2) you find the story interesting. It's the ones at 20-40k words that can have problems, because most of the sample can be taken up by the intro pages.

[DaringNovelist]

Originally Posted by ficbot

Now? Yes. A few years ago, when Fictionwise was pretty much the only game in town? No. And they didn't allow reviews either. So if it was an indie book and not reviewed on Amazon or elsewhere, you took your chances based on the blurb. And sometimes, wound up with a lot of crapola.

But Ficbot, Fictionwise did NOT allow indie publishing at all. An author had to be able to offer ten previously published titles or they couldn't get in at all.

Camille

[kcmay]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

Your points are all valid. However many book purchases are impulse buys, and when an author writes a really killer promotional post with knowledge of the subject and obvious passion; I have, in the past at least, assumed this was an indication of writing and organizational skill, and that the level of quality of the promotional post was a reasonable indication of the quality of the book being promoted.

You make a great point: some writers are better at the marketing of their book than they are at writing stories. Those are two different types of writing that take skill (and practice) to master. On the other hand, some writers stink at marketing, but they can write a story just fine.

[Libby Cone]

There are plenty of self-published book review sites, like http://thenewpodlerreviews.blogspot.com/

I agree, there is plenty of crap out there (my fellow reviewers have taken me to task for my high snarkiness), but every once in a while you run into a gem.

[MartinParish]

I guess there's a couple things I want to clarify. I don't think reader reviews are unreliable at all; ultimately, it's the readers' opinions that are the only true test of the quality of a book. A good book is one that people like (or one that YOU like, I should say).

My problem is that I don't know whether a reader review is really a reader review or not. It could be a friend/family/author review, in which case it's really an ad disguised as a review. I suspect that's very often the case with self-published books on Amazon, so it's led me to mistrust a lot of the reader reviews for self-published books - which is unfortunate.

Is it possible to find a good book on Smashwords by reading through the sample for each book? Well, it depends on how much time you have. At the moment, finding a good book on Smashwords is a remarkably time-consuming experience. So much so, in fact, that at the end of the day I'm more likely to do something else in my spare time, like posting on a Mobile Reads forum (which at least gives me the chance to have my two cents' worth).

None of this is intended as a criticism of Smashwords authors. It would be a little inane of me to condemn Smashwords authors because I AM a Smashwords author, ironically enough. There are unquestionably good Smashwords books out there. Here's the question: how do you find them without spending six years on your search?

I think (as I said before) that all of this is a temporary problem. The Internet is still young and online self-publishing is a relatively new trend. I think a kind of crowdsourcing model is going to emerge that will solve some of these problems. In the meantime, however, I commend those who are reviewing Smashwords or Kindle books to make it a little easier for the rest of us.

And yes, I still think a book-reviewing AI would be a really big help. If any of you are computer scientists, this is it! here's your chance to help us all out!

[Marioninyc]

Martin -- Honestly, not arguing. I understand the frustration. For myself, the solution is to maybe be attracted by the review/comments, but not to buy or download till I've seen a sample. Usually, it doesn't take much (maybe the first 500 words) for me to know whether or not I'm going to want to read the book. It might fall apart later, but I take my chances.
I do think you might not be so hard on the writers and their supporters. It might not be the case of someone asking friends and family to write gushing reviews, but there may be people from a writing group who knew the work as it was being developed, or friends of friends who came across it and were genuinely impressed. I have seven 5-star reviews under a novella on smashwords, I'd challenged anyone to sort out which was written by a close friend, which by people I knew vaguely from a website , which by a friend of a friend who I thought would be interested in the book, and which by total strangers (most of them). I never asked anyone to write reviews and I don't think any of the people who did lied. Are you suggesting that people who have any connection with the writer be prohibited from leaving comments? Wouldn't that put th self-published at a terrible disadvantage? Published novels are also reviewed by friends. Publishing companies, agents and publicists can push for reviews in magazines that wouldn't touch self-published books. Until that part changes, self-published writers need to rely on the reader comments.
As a consumer of self published books, you can do your part by writing honest reviews, especially of any gems you find.

[DaringNovelist]

One tip for using samples to browse through books.....

Don't try to read them online and make your buying decision while shopping. Just download the sample (or add to library without buying if that's how your ereader works).

Then you can browse them at your leisure. And it goes faster too.

Camille

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by DaringNovelist

One tip for using samples to browse through books.....

Don't try to read them online and make your buying decision while shopping. Just download the sample (or add to library without buying if that's how your ereader works).

Then you can browse them at your leisure. And it goes faster too.

I use the opposite approach. Adding files to the reader is more hassle for me than reading samples online. I don't want my PRS-505 cluttered with a dozen short excerpts that, if I like, I'll have to go back online & find again in order to get the full book. Especially since the sample has the same metadata as the full book--my Reader doesn't have a convenient way to tell me it's a sample; I have to go into the doc info & look at the filename for that.

I prefer to read samples while browsing the website; if I'm interested enough that a few minutes of reading isn't enough, obviously I like the book enough to read the rest of it. Whether I think it's worth the price the author set is another issue, but I don't need to read half the book to decide that.

YMMV; everyone has different ways of deciding what they want to read. I dislike the frustration of running out of book on my Reader, especially if I'm on the train or in a place where I can't easily get to the rest of it if I was enjoying it. Other people might not want to read as much on a computer screen.

[Marseille]

Originally Posted by ficbot

S/he does if they have the same taste as you. I have seen this tons of times on my exercise video group. A person quickly figures out which posters have the same taste as they do and follows that person's comments. If a certain person in that group says she likes a certain dvd, I know I am likely to also enjoy it. And if she hates it, it is probably not for me.

Netflix has a fantastic system that basically automates some of that for you. I'd love to see someone really flesh out a social review system for books, so I can pick people who like what I like and get recommendations based off of that.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

Your points are all valid. However many book purchases are impulse buys, and when an author writes a really killer promotional post with knowledge of the subject and obvious passion; I have, in the past at least, assumed this was an indication of writing and organizational skill, and that the level of quality of the promotional post was a reasonable indication of the quality of the book being promoted.

I guess my original post was, in a way, an announcement of the end of my innocence. I'm just NOT going to make those assumptions any more.

Sample, sample, sample!!! (Your original didn't mention a sampling...I'm curious. If you had sampled, say, the first 30 pages, would you have avoided the problem?)

I read books by self-pub'd authors now more than ever. I sample now more than ever. Those two things don't actually go together. The e-reader is what turned me into a sampler. I rarely even download the freebies without sampling. The last three books I downloaded from "traditional" publishers I didn't sample. I didn't like any of them.

(That is not to say that self-published do not have issues.)

That said--we love you impulse buyers.

Maria

[tompe]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Sample, sample, sample!!! (Your original didn't mention a sampling...I'm curious. If you had sampled, say, the first 30 pages, would you have avoided the problem?

What is the hit rate for good books here? If I have to sample 10 books (30 pages sample) than I have read one bad book in text. Why should I spend time doing that when I easily can find a book I will enjoy using other methods?

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by tompe

What is the hit rate for good books here? If I have to sample 10 books (30 pages sample) than I have read one bad book in text. Why should I spend time doing that when I easily can find a book I will enjoy using other methods?

Well, some books don't even make the 30 pages to be honest. Some of that is because different books are held to different standards. For example, I love humor--cozy mysteries or any humor. Those books will generally get most of the 30 pages to set a tone or grab me. A regular mystery...it could get less. I read, but don't necessarily love PI books (many exceptions, but if the guy is on a binge drinking spree on the first couple of pages...not so interested. Lots of people loved Dog On It, but the main character was wallowing in self-pity so far as I was concerned. While this falls into genres I read often, I tired of his wallowing fairly quickly. I still have the book, but can't get very interested, despite multiple recs.) Another thing that tends to get me to shut a sample pretty fast is changing POV in the first 30 pages. Thirty pages is enough to immerse me in one character. More than that and my attention span just ain't there.

I'm sure I miss good books.

I don't spend a lot of time deciding. The book either grabs me or it doesn't.

[NickSpalding]

I actually underplay how brilliant my book is in my promotions.

There's a very good chance it might be the greatest piece of literature in human history.

Certainly the greatest to feature killer hedgehogs.

I am a literary master underappreciated in his own time.

And I have an enormous penis, I'm incredibly good looking and have a brain the size of a planet.

Modest to a fault as well.

Read my book, it will bring a glimmer of light into the otherwise cold, dark pit of existence.

[scveteran]

Originally Posted by BexBits

I have found several I really enjoyed but I do insist on a sample. To be honest, I prefer to have the first thing I read be an entire work and free. If the author doesn't offer the book itself for free I'll read a short story or novella to get a sense of how well they write.

I don't feel badly about that because it is how I've operated for years. Money is tight in my life and I almost never actually *buy* a book from someone I haven't read before (that's what libraries are for.) I'm a bit more willing to take a chance at Smashwords when the price is low but, hey, a buck's a buck. Give me a reason to give it to you instead of to 7-11 for a cup of coffee.

I can see saying that you would like to check out the author's work at a library. I would disagree with the idea that the author should need to give some of works free of charge before people buy their works. Seems too much like a sense of entitlement to me.

BTW, for those who know me. I just got back out of the hospital again. Had a heart cath this time. So I have been out of touch for a few days.

[Marseille]

Originally Posted by BexBits

I have found several I really enjoyed but I do insist on a sample. To be honest, I prefer to have the first thing I read be an entire work and free. If the author doesn't offer the book itself for free I'll read a short story or novella to get a sense of how well they write.

Originally Posted by scveteran

I can see saying that you would like to check out the author's work at a library. I would disagree with the idea that the author should need to give some of works free of charge before people buy their works. Seems too much like a sense of entitlement to me.

Insisting on seeing an unknown's work before buying any isn't a sense of entitlement, just one way to discover their worth.

Truth is most people require some clue that they could like someone's work before they buy it. With the mass market, reviews, recs, publishers etc perform functions to provide that clue. For indies (which is mostly where self promoted titles come from), there's so little exposure that reviews and recommendations (and library copies) will be fewer and farther between, so that author needs to find some other way to prove their worth to readers. It would be a sense of entitlement for an author to think they didn't need to find a way to fill that void, and people should just buy their content with no assurances.

Sampling isn't the only way, but whatever the method, there's a void to be filled, and it isn't a reader's responsibility to fill it.