05-16-2018, 07:39 AM | #31 | |
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05-16-2018, 07:57 AM | #32 |
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...and is a sample of one amateur is enough to slander hundreds/thousands of established pros?
In the SF field, nobody is going to claim Leo Frankowski, Lois Bujold, Kate Wilhem, or Eric Flint are slush pile just because they self-publish. Bujold and Flint in particular are reportedly happy at BAEN but BAEN is small and they can't publish everything their authors can conceive so they self-pub material that isn't a great fit at BAEN. Wilhem wasn't happy at the new contract terms they tried to foist on her after decades in the business so she just pulled everything she could and went Indie. Jerry Pournelle encouraged his daughter to self-publish her authorized sequel to THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE. Saw no reason to even submit. No lazy amateurs in that bunch, just experienced authors aware that today's tradpub isn't the tradpub they developed under. Dozens of similar tales all over for those willing to look. Last edited by fjtorres; 05-16-2018 at 08:13 AM. |
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05-16-2018, 08:29 AM | #33 | |
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Don't get me wrong; I reject a ton of books in my search for new reading material. For tons of reasons. The publishing method just isn't one of those reasons. |
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05-16-2018, 09:33 AM | #34 | |
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I'm nostalgic for a lot of the books their artwork adorned, but the artwork itself always made me cringe and want to hide the book whenever people were around. |
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05-16-2018, 10:04 AM | #35 | |
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Oh, btw, someone else will need to comment to this, so fjtorres can continue his petty little game of not engaging with me directly. |
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05-16-2018, 10:12 AM | #36 | |
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05-16-2018, 12:28 PM | #37 | |
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It's apples and oranges that just happened to be packed in the same box. |
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05-16-2018, 12:31 PM | #38 |
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Quick sidetrack, though. What books did Leo Frankowski self-publish? As far as I am aware, all of his books were through Baen, except for perhaps one completed and published after his death.
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05-16-2018, 01:48 PM | #39 | |
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It was mentioned a few times that there are self-published books that are re-issues or written by authors who previously published books traditionally and their niche publisher went out of business. These are not examples for what I was referring to when I voiced my experience with works by self-publishing writers. A self-published re-issue was at some point a traditionally published book, and authors whose previous works were published traditionally have already demonstrated their ability (although I would still be more hesitant here because there is a substantial difference between a submitted manuscript and the post-editing product). At the end of the day, I'm guided by my own experiences. I have been satisfied with the majority of traditionally published fiction I've read, and only a small portion of self-published novels left me feeling good about the time I spent with them. That's my vantage point. I'm just not keen on continuing to experiment only because self-publishing appeals to me on a romantic level. It's a nice idea, a great concept even, that largely doesn't (presently) work for me as a consumer/reader. |
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05-16-2018, 01:53 PM | #40 |
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I thought he was mostly published by Del Rey. Baen was mostly doing reprints. It wasn't until 1999 that he started getting picked up by Baen. He self published a bunch of stuff that started with Del Rey and hadn't been picked up by Baen or that was done after Baen dropped him. Copernick's Rebellion is the one I ran into, but there are some others.
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05-16-2018, 03:20 PM | #41 | |
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05-18-2018, 08:13 PM | #42 | |
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05-19-2018, 07:45 AM | #43 | |
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He was in final edits for the last one when he died but he gave explicit instructions to a close friend on how to proceed. He basically wanted to maximize the take for his estate. He got to finish the series and quite nicely. Good cover art though in an, unavoidably, different style from the earlier quintet. https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Conrads-...onrad+stargard https://www.amazon.com/Conrads-Last-...ZJSA2JHGQDHWH2 They've been out for about 4 years. There might be other stuff he left behind but those were the ones I grabbed as soon as I saw them. |
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05-19-2018, 08:30 AM | #44 | |
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It is simply an extra way to bring stories to market open to everybody. And each author gets to do it their way: some do it all tgemselves, some hire established professionals. Some do everything via selfpub, some do select pieces that don't fit in the tradpub "box". It's freeform publishing. Some established authors that control their own international rights tradpub in the US and selfpub outside the US. (Diane Duane, for one. She sells those from her own website.) I already mentioned Eric Flint whose GRANTVILLE SAGA shared world series is so big BAEN can't publish everything so he directs the overflow to Indie ebooks. Same standards as the rest of the series, just a separate anthology channel for standalone shorts, whereas BAEN publishes the ones with recurring characters. I also mentioned how a whole lot of authors selfpub their reverted backlist and even extend those older series via selfpub. Joe Konrath being a prime example of that. There's tons more but the Indie world has matured past evangelizing and most of them are settling down to writing, publishing, and making a good living. Terry Goodkind is another example: he used selfpublishing as a lever to get a better tradpub deal. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/...ext-novel.html He self-published to big sales and then got a tradpub to take over. Other authors have self-published to use Amazon's SCOUT program (soon to end) to try to get a tradpub contract with AmazonPublishing. It's a kinder/gentler tradpub (50% of net instead of 25%) but it's still tradpub. Self-publishing is just a publishing strategy. A business decision. A process that can be used in many ways to many purposes. It's just a "box" if you like the term. It says nothing about the author (other than being aware of the current realities of publishing) and nothing about the content. Blanket dismissal of it just blinds you to good authors., both old and new. But most especially, the new. Because, in today's reality, a newcomer is *demonstrably* better off learning to do Indie right that spending years trying to get noticed by the "tradpub machine" you mentioned. It's a purely statistical fact: the odds of launching an enduring and *profitable* writing career are higher on the Indie side. Just ask the Author's Guild about declining tradpub incomes. https://www.authorsguild.org/industr...es-of-writing/ https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...ty-line-survey https://www.npr.org/2016/01/09/46243...rs-pen-demands Some IndiePub is new, some is rereleases. Some is good, some is bad. It offers some advantages to established authors and different ones to newcomers. It also comes with some disadvantages, like not being able to get into B&N stores. The same can be said about traditional publishing. (Again: Sturgeon was talking tradpub. And he was right. In fact, 100% of everything is crap...to somebody, somewhere.) The publishing path is something that should only matter to authors, not well-informed readers. And mostly it does: for the vast majority of book buyers outside Mobilereads Indie vs tradpub is a non issue. They see a book they like, they buy it regardless of how it got to market. It's all about finding a story to your taste. Last edited by fjtorres; 05-19-2018 at 08:45 AM. |
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05-19-2018, 10:57 AM | #45 |
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I get a kick out of people trying to exclude "already successful authors" from discussions about self-publishing (or better yet, excluding the self-pubbers that went on to get tradpub deals). It's probably because it doesn't slot in nicely with their preconceived notion that all self-published stuff is garbage. Reminds me of mainstream literature cherry-picking all the bright and shiny stuff from the ranks of genre fiction and then poo-pooing genre fiction as garbage.
"When I say 'self-published stuff is all garbage', I don't mean the good self-published stuff, I'm only talking about the garbage self-published stuff being garbage." Last edited by DiapDealer; 05-19-2018 at 11:19 AM. |
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