The Wheat from the Chaff: Filling the role of The Gatekeeper

[maddz]

I know what you mean by bad writing in the sense that someone was not taught English grammar let alone spelling. Just before the Easter holiday, I was scrolling through the free Kindle books looking for reading material to take away, and selected something which looked interesting. The kindest thing I could say about it was that it was short. If it was free to serve as an introduction to the authors' work, then it failed miserably - I won't even bother with the rest of their ouvre - in fact, I will actively avoid it.

Fortunately, most of the self-published dreck I see falls into the paranormal romance genre which is pretty easy to avoid - all you have to do is look at the cover. Gushing reviews aren't always helpful; I honestly think many are written by the author's family and friends (or by sock puppet accounts - wasn't there an issue with that a couple of years back?)

Trouble is, even if you stick with authors who have been trad published, that doesn't always work - there's a couple of authors in the SFF field who have also written in various romance genres, and those are bad. However, this may be an issue with romance in general - they seem to be designed as read once then throw away books; it's one of the reasons I dislike romance and other chick-lit.

[meeera]

I only ever pick up a self-pubbed book when it's been recommended by someone whose taste I tend to share and trust. And a bad cover will require incredibly over-the-top good reviews and recs from trusted folks before I will look past it.

Most tradpubbed books I come to because of reviews (occasionally published, more often from people in my network, and also often from podcast or blog recs), because I read the author already, because I meet the author at a convention, because of an award plus good reviews, or very occasionally because it's from an imprint with some consistency that I have very much enjoyed before. I almost never pick up either a tradpub or a selfpub book at random. I have too much on my TBR already to go sifting through the slushpile.

[pdurrant]

There's a very good reason why the deal/freebies threads ban self-published works unless the poster has read and likes the complete book themselves.

I know of no way to automatically reject badly written trash, even at the spelling and grammar level.

I don't look at self-published stuff without a solid recommendation now.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Depends. I read self-published books pretty often and have found many enjoyable and reasonably well-edited works. OTOH, I have been bored to tears with quite a lot of books from the mainstream publishers. So I'm grateful self-publishing exists. Of course there are heaps of dreck, but I am content to do my own gatekeeping. Self-published books are generally cheaper too. I'm pretty grumpy when I'm forced to abandon a boring traditionally published book with the price tag of 10-15$. And it has happened a lot.

Exactly. Let the readers choose. The only person I want or need as gatekeeper is me. If you don't want to be your own gatekeeper, then do as Harry does, and only read books from traditional publishers.

Shari

[DiapDealer]

I've never been all that enamored of the idea of traditional publishers playing the gatekeeping role of Basic Competence Police.

Maybe some were comforted by the notion of being able to blindly reach into a bag of hundreds of thousands of random new(ish) books and pull out a competently written one, but color me unimpressed. A) I very rarely select books to read randomly, and B) I don't ever recall being comforted by the fact that a book I chose at random—and didn't like—met a basic level of competence.

"I hated that sucker, but MY GOD, the level of competence was just amazing! You should definitely check out it next time you're you're looking for a competently written, but otherwise utterly dreadful book. You won't be disappointed."

[HarryT]

This seems to be a somewhat redundant discussion. Those of us who like to use publishers as gatekeepers can do so; those who don't wish to do so don't have to. Everyone's happy .

[ApK]

DD, obviously I didn't mean to imply that sentence construction and basic syntax were the only criteria I wanted to choose a book by, but I, for one, consider it a prerequisite for even being able to consider anything else about the content.
My intent for the thread boils down to the questions:
1. Are we stuck with a high noise-to-signal ratio in terms of basic competence as the price of the new model of publishing?
2. What are people's methods for dealing with it?

The most popular answers for 2 so far seem to be:
1. Recommendations from trusted sources
2. Stick to proven writers/sources
3. Read samples
4. Cry babies, real readers dont need no stinkin' help.

[ApK]

Harry, I see value in the new model, and the democratization of publishing, as do many, so I'm looking for ways to make the best of it.
Sure one can stick to trad pub, that's clearly some folks trusted source....at least as long as that model stays viable....

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ApK

Harry, I see value in the new model, and the democratization of publishing, as do many, so I'm looking for ways to make the best of it.
Sure one can stick to trad pub, that's clearly some folks trusted source....at least as long as that model stays viable....

I see value in it as well. All I was saying is that it doesn't have to be a "one or the other" situation; the traditional and "new" publishing models can happily co-exist, and each consumer can make their own decision about which they prefer to use (or use both, of course).

[Sirtel]

As for me, I don't use recommendations or trusted authors, it would be too limiting for me. I like to choose at random, but that doesn't mean I immediately buy anything I see. I look at cover and synopsis first. If I'm still interested, I'll read reviews and check out the look-inside, then I'll decide if I want the book enough to pay for it.

[Cinisajoy]

Couple of quick answers.
To Darryl, Fivver had a review gig for a while.
To maddz, a bunch of people heard romance was a hot seller so they started putting anything and everything in romance. Especially short "series" and the e word.

[issybird]

Poor diction, grammar, spelling and punctuation are dealbreakers for me and yes, they can largely be avoided by staying with trad-pub. But even the best edited and proofed self-pub tends to seem like carp to me, so editing issues are largely irrelevant. Sure, the trads publish a lot of dreck, but they've still got the odds in their favor.

[theducks]

I continue to use the same method I have used for the last 50 years.
Open the book and read a sample page or two.

[issybird]

Since obviously there's a large market that's willing to consider self-pub, the contest is not self-pub v trad-pub; the real competition is between the quality indies and their illiterate or untalented brethren and how to differentiate themselves from that pack, the overwhelming majority.

I know there must be some quality indie offerings out there, but I also don't see the point of trying to seek than out. The only real argument is that they're cheaper, but generally I think trad-pub is cheap enough or there's the library.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by issybird

Since obviously there's a large market that's willing to consider self-pub, the contest is not self-pub v trad-pub; the real competition is between the quality indies and their illiterate or untalented brethren and how to differentiate themselves from that pack, the overwhelming majority.

I knew there must be some quality indie offerings out there, but I also don't see the point of trying to seek than out. The only real argument is that they're cheaper, but generally I think trad-pub is cheap enough or there's the library.

That's it exactly...this isn't meant to exclude or dismiss trad pub, rather for those who want to explore the much larger new crop of indies, how does one best manage it.

As side from price, however, the other reasons for looking at that crop were among the points I asked we set aside here: Perhaps there are gems in the indie crop that have escaped the biases, censorship and mistakes and other arbitrary or intentional barriers of the trad-pub gate keeping. I didn't want to make this thread the venue for discussing those things, but there is the implicit stipulation here that there is SOME REASON the new indie crop is worth looking at, else "stick to trad pub" would not only be AN answer, it would be THE answer.

As Darryl mentioned earlier, "Gatekeeper" is now the wrong word for the indie side, where the gates are gone, but rather it's the still-useful functions of that role I'm looking to keep. Rather than "Gatekeeper," maybe "Guide" or "Helpful person at the info kiosk" is a better term.

<Rushing to register the domain 'helpfulpersonatheinfokiosk.com'...>

ApK