Indie Book Club discussion

I'm posting this link to help Indie authors, although this article is a scathing rebuke of Indie authors. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Read it and see if you need to take some advice, even if it is harshly presented. Then also read the comments, which are a great vindication of the Indies project!

http://anonnymouse13.wordpress.com/20...

Hmm. Although he makes some valid points regarding editing, it sounds like someone needs a vacation, lol.
What I found the most interesting, however, is that in his next post, the Twilight Effect, he essentially undermines most of his arguments from his Indie rant.
In his Indie rant, he says Indies should wait and "pay their dues" by being traditionally published because that's the only way to produce quality books.
Then, in Twilight Effect, he talks about how trad publishers are only interested in what's going to appeal to the masses regardless how good or original the stories are, and that the quality of what's being traditionally published is going downhill.
Then he goes on to tell readers to stop buying what the trads are putting out to get them to put out good material instead. But if readers are only supposed to buy what trads put out, then there's no way for them to change the traditional houses except to stop reading altogether, OR turn to Indie. I vote for the second option, thank you.
I especially like how he used J.K. Rowling as an example of an author who "stuck with it" to go traditional. What he fails to mention is that when Rowling was trying to get published, self-publishing wasn't a viable option. All that were out there were vanity presses. She stuck with it because there was no other option. I can't help but think that if the story played out today, she would have ended up self-publishing Harry Potter after enough rejections from trad houses who "know what sells."
Yep, a vacation or medication seems to be called for here. Maybe both.

Ha! Love your deconstruction G.

Sara wrote: "I'm posting this link to help Indie authors, although this article is a scathing rebuke of Indie authors. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Read it and see if you need to take some ad..."

wow...that was rough. Some truth to it for sure. I think I've been almost that frustrated after a 8-10 book dry spell of indie crap. And I love this line

"they exist online in massive droves of people just waiting to pick your shit apart… it’s brutal, and kind of hot"

I agree with much of what he says, but on the flip side, if that's what people what to buy, what's the point of making something better? And yet, I personally obsessed over editing, formatting, proofreading, beta reading, etc...before I left my first self pubbed project out into the world. Coming from traditional first, I just felt like people expected that from me and I'd be raked over the coals if I didn't deliver.

Huzzah Julie. I like your attitude and review standards. If a book is you, then I feel an obligation to do the best book I can do. Indies will be judged to a traditional standard anyway. No one wants to read flawed mediocre drek. Sonoma Knight: The Goat-Ripper Case

Agreed.

I missed it. The site has been deleted.

Yeah, the site is gone.

I guess what we saw was that black hole imploding!

It was pretty nasty.

Too bad the site was deleted. I was curious.

The site might have been deleted for a reason.

I'm late getting to this, too, but this continues to be a popular ... thought? And because the original blog post is gone, I'm quoting what G. took from it above:

"In his Indie rant, he says Indies should wait and 'pay their dues' by being traditionally published because that's the only way to produce quality books."

He was apparently assuming that indies don't pay their dues, many of which are paid long before publishing becomes an idea. They include working hard on the writing, working hard on the revisions, taking the work seriously enough to have critical readers offer constructive feedback, editing again, possibly hiring an editor, and then sending query letters to agents.

If indies were all to wait for a publisher to take on the book before self-publishing, why, they wouldn't really need to self-publish, would they?

Writing is like anything else. Some people are better or worse at it than others. Some people take it more or less seriously than others. Many people will publish with the same impulsivity as they'll submit a blurry photograph to a "best pictures" competition, and some will labor over the thing for years before even considering releasing it to a single reader.

I do agree that if you want your writing to be taken seriously, YOU have to take it seriously, but I don't think taking it seriously has anything to do with the choice of publishing. Opting not to self-publish, or to not release the writing because it hasn't been approved of by the right publisher who just happened to see something in it they liked (or thought they could sell), seems like a waste of a lot of work. It also denies a lot of readers what might be a fantastic story.

I agree very much with Chris and with G (who wrote her post about a year ago). To say that indie writers need to pay dues is very condescending to say the least. Who died and made him gatekeeper? For those who prefer the traditional route that's fine, but that hardly means that those of us who chose to go indie are somehow less than worthy. Different does not equal less than. It's simply different.

Some of us have never been comfortable with the Old Testament notion that our work required some sort of perverse blessing from some 'higher literary Being' before it was OK to be presented to the masses. Some of us think it's OK to cut out the middleman and go straight to the masses ourselves. And for those of us who have chosen this path, I think we know that process is dues enough for several lifetimes.

Whenever I speak with publishers, editors, and others in the industry, they continually downplay the significance of indie publishing, self-publishing and other freelance work. The biggest argument is that the industry needs gatekeepers otherwise the market will be awash with inferior works, drowning out the quality ones that deserve attention. Second, the overall quality of prose will drop due to a decline in editing services available. Finally, they argue no one can truly write a great book by themselves. They need high quality peer review from the best, which may include a series of rejection letters and tough love.

All of this reminds of the mentality of labor unions and guilds: it is all about seniority and paying your dues to the industry. The whole is more important than the constituent parts. If great novels get delayed due to stingy gatekeepers, it is all for the greater good. It also gives the elites within the industry all the power, making them feel all the more important.

The internet, e-books, and self-publishing have all given us the means to test their arguments. It is safe to say they were wrong.

Quality writing rises to the top. Look at the success of Hugh Howey and Andy Weir. If you've read Wool and The Martian, you'll see that self-published books can be truly excellent, head and shoulders better than the offerings of traditional publishers like Red Rising and Bone Season. (These two were highly promoted titles from my genre, picked off top of my head).

Goodreads ratings:
Bone Season - 3.68
Red Rising - 4.16
Wool - 4.26
The Martian - 4.34

It is true there are horrible self or indie published novels. It is also true there are awful titles from traditional publishers.

The converse is true. There are great indie novels that no one has read, with reviews from only the author's friends and family. However, there are also plenty of great books that traditional publishers put out there with no real marketing campaign. They take a while to reach the sun. The indie publishing revolution hasn't changed much in the realities of the industry.

From a financial standpoint, the data concludes traditional publishers are wrong about the market. The market embraces indie novels and is showing it with their wallets. Check out the data at this website:

http://authorearnings.com/

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the numbers but I have no reason to doubt them.

Conclusion:
The market is indeed awash with titles but readers aren't frustrated. Customer reviews at Amazon and Goodreads gives them a starting point to determine if a title, indie or traditional, is a polished product. Before the internet these weren't available to readers, they had to trust the gatekeepers.

The overall quality of prose has perhaps dipped a little but readers don't seem too upset at this. Great literature is still rising to the surface.

Their final argument is nonsense. There is no evidence that an author must "pay their dues" to become a great and/o successful writer. There are countless examples of authors whose first novel is considered to be among their best.

That was an excellent breakdown Wesley. Thank you.

My personal opinion is that people in general do and will always want to set themselves apart from others. In this case, it's traditional publishers setting themselves apart (and above) indie publishers, but you can see the same pattern in pretty much every facet of life. When we find ourselves the victims of such segregation or stereotypes, our best course is to prove that the lines are non-sense. Arguing it, though sometimes needed, will only take us so far.

I think the market is awash with bad ebooks, but it is also awash with good ebooks. I used to peruse my library looking for books to read. It wasn't that big a library, but it was obvious that I could never read all the good books. It's even more true now.

There are a lot of good ebooks out there that are being ignored, but there are a lot of hardbacks facing the same thing.

Very true. No matter the quality, only a few will make it big. Which brings to mind the question of why some books of (in my opinion) relatively low quality still make millions and end up being movies/shows. As if there isn't enough great stuff to choose from. *shrugs*

It's also worth mentioning we might see a hybrid approach become common, where authors are neither exclusively self-published nor traditionally published.

Independence means far more control over the cover, the style (you don't need to force work to fit into current fashion), timing of releases and price (as well as getting a bigger cut). Traditional publishing still has more kudos attached, and is better, financially, for physical copies (I'm sure many are familiar with the way pricing for self-published e-books and physical copies works, which means a writer can make more from an electronic version half the price of a physical one).

This thread put a smile on my face :) Your comments also show how Indie Authors are becoming more educated about how the Industry works. I'm also happy that quality books, whether self-published or trad published, have a chance of rising to the top and be noticed.

I'll keep working on making myself the best writer I can be. With patience and continuous improvement, anything can happen

I wish you all the best.

.

Which negative review would you rather receive for your book:
"Deep and poignant but boring" OR "fun and exciting but superficial"?
(Ideally, we'd all like our writing to be deep and exciting at the same time; but since we're not going to please everyone, I think our style and content will lean more towards one critique or the other.)

Jason wrote: "Which negative review would you rather receive for your book:
"Deep and poignant but boring" OR "fun and exciting but superficial"?"

I think the second. Because my books tend to be layered - some people only see the superficial, while other readers see through the top layer to see the subversive and philosophical parts underneath. But they can be enjoyed on a purely superficial level as well.

Martyn V. (aka Baron Sang-Froid) wrote: "Jason wrote: "Which negative review would you rather receive for your book:
"Deep and poignant but boring" OR "fun and exciting but superficial"?"

I think the second. Because my books tend to be l..."

I agree.

Me too.