I hope you don’t mind doing a quick poll. We’re trying to figure out if it is worth it for us to invest in responsive design theme, which would change depending on the device you used to access the website.
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Loading ...Okay, so I have my fancy Kindle Fire. However, I haven’t bought any books.
I tried going through the best seller list and it is flooded with $.99 releases and free e-books. I am kind of forced to wade through these to get to something interesting to read, so I just started downloading samples. Most of them are crap. There, I said it. Poorly edited, badly written crap. I am usually more diplomatic, but Christ on a cracker, can’t these people take a little more pride in the drivel they put out?
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Originally I went on about John Locke syndrome over here, but John stopped by to defend his good name a little bit, so in the interests of clarity, here is a quote which is often used in support of the assertion that at 99 cents people are likely to buy anything, even if it’s poorly written.
“I’m new to the writing game. But if I’d started self-publishing even three years ago, I would have spent all my time trying to prove to the public I’m just as good as the top authors in America. These days, the burden of proof is on them. Now the best authors in America have to prove they’re ten times better than me. And in a game like that, I like my chances.” – John Locke
John, who is being very nice in the comments, does stress the importance of good editing and formatting. Sadly, the quote can be read as stating that one should only aspire to be 1/10th as good as a traditionally published author, but it probably wasn’t fair of me to call it the John Locke syndrome. Anyway, please be nice to John and don’t flame him.
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I don’t want to read crap even if it’s priced at ninety-nine cents. It’s still crap! What happened to taking pride in your work and delivering the best book you can possibly write to the reader? Books are not vacuum cleaners. The idea is not to churn out as many of them as you can as fast as you can to get the biggest pay day. They are an intellectual pursuit. They contribute to the cultural wealth of us as people.
Argh.
And the reviews of these masterpieces say things like, “It was okay for ninety nine cents.”
::clenches fist and shakes: It’s not the point for it to be okay! Don’t do okay, do the best you can do! Be awesome! You are not just taking the reader’s 99 cents, you are taking his time. The hours of his life. Come on!
Dear people who have reviewer blogs: can you please get together and create some sort of graphic badge of coolness that can then be applied to the covers of awesome books, so authors can add them to their covers, therefore distinguishing them from the sea of self-published awfulness and so people like me don’t have to blow a gasket when browsing for something to read? Thank you.
I will start: Jill Myles – awesome books for ninety nine cents and above. Some are even free. Funny, sexy, some are a little improbable but super-fun. Conquistador on a Dinosaur Island – come on, I know you want to read that!
With your website I think you should only bother putting you book pages up in a phone compatible format, that the only part of author webpages I even look at on my phone, and anyone after you blog can access that by the feed any way.
Having the books part work on mobile device is useful through, it means if some one finds you book in a store they can easily find some further info about it.
I have been reading on my Kindle account for a couple of years. First on the free PC app then on my very own kindle. For a retired guy living small it is a real space saver. I learned quickly to stay completely away, that is off of, the kindle section of Amazon. First I find a published book in the book section and the go for the kindle version. I really have no idea what the long term effect of cheap ebooks is going have on the overall quality of writing. I have always read…, I guess it will come down to having reviewers that you trust, and author blogs that point you to new comers. It should be exciting to watch develop!
Would you need to pay for the responsive theme? It took me about a month until I understood how mine worked (urgh all the @ipad{blabla} stuff. So confusing!), but from what I can tell if your website isn’t too complex (taxonomies, custom post types, different slideshows etc., 2000 different sidebars depending on the site posttype you’re viewing) it shouldn’t be that expensive.. And if it is, it’s not worth it. Except if it’s a new theme altogether..
(Is there a badge already?
If not, maybe customize one of the ones online on iconfinder.com?)
I just got my Kindle on Thursday and I am so happy with it. I am wading through all the books as well so I don’t have any recommendations yet but I did get Silver Shark…doing my happy dance
I’m not sure what you mean by responsive design theme, but I don’t think you should spend a lot on it. Does that mean it depends on how we view your site (computer, tablet, phone, etc) on what we will see? I enjoy your comments and vents so have fun and keep it up.
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I don’t usually fall for the .99 book deal unless it’s an author I already know. That said, I have been buying 1.99 and 2.99 books lately. I, like others here, find it a great way to try new authors or read novellas from current favs ie; Eloisa James new novella. I always try to read reviews first before I spend my hard earned dollar (or two) but with the price of ebooks and volume of books I read, the more bargains the better!
I think you are overlooking the fact that it is possible to be disappointed in the 12.99 ebooks as well. At least with 0.99 if you decide to stop reading after a few chapters you haven’t lost much, and if it is a good story I can overlook copyerrors.
I agree completely. There are a lot of full priced books out that there that I have been disappointed with, and then I have just wasted more money.
Try to look at reviews before you buy a book.
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Thanks Ilona! I am so impressed you amended your comments–how classy is that! Yes, I agree my quote can be seen to mean different things. To clarify, I was talking about how difficult it was for self-published authors to compete against the giants of the industry, and how pricing has leveled the playing field. The famous authors typically charge 10 to 15 times as much as me. I think they might be two or three times better than me, but perhaps not 10 or 15 times better! So I felt my books offered value for those who couldn’t afford to buy lots of best sellers. I tell people to buy the books they can afford first, and if they’ve got an extra dollar after doing that, maybe they can give one of my books a try. And I offer potential buyers a free look inside my books so they can decide if I’m a good fit for them.
PS: On page 87 of the How To book from which we’ve been quoting, I explain the most important step in my system is: “Write the best and most original book you can.”
Ilona, I’m glad this happened. It gave me a chance to get to know you. I very much appreciate your giving me a chance to explain myself! Many thanks!
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Dear John,
I am glad you stopped by, both because it helped clarify your position and because you are very nice. It was such a pleasure to be able to converse about the topic of self-publishing without having it dissolve into a highly polarized discussion. You are welcome to stop by any time.
You may be a fair decent author, but it still does not excuse the people out there who do not put their full effort into their writing. Which makes me, the reader, very disappointed. But then you get well known authors who, as they progressively become ‘famous’ slacken off in the quality of their work.
And then there are the ‘famous’ people who are ‘famous’ for the utter dribble that comes out of their pen – I would name a couple but I will refrain.
In saying this, Ilona and Gordon, if there comes a time where I am disappointed in the quality of your books, I will fly from Australia and beat you both with my teddy bear while sobbing. Horrendously.
Interesting conversation. I haven’t dipped my toe into the self-pub market much myself yet. I’ve enjoyed watching all the publishing changes just to see how fast things are happening and watching trends in publishing.
I have found I do buy a lot of published authors in my genre I have not read who offer a novella for cheap or have the first in the series up for free to sample.
*Kof* while it does nothing for my eyes, I use an iPod to do some of my browsing.
Like Vinity, I read the first of new series (to me) when they are offered cheap or free. Then, man, do I get sucked in. I also rebuy books that I like to reread. Oh, sort of like this weird lion shifting dude and a kickass daughter of an evil being
Here you are- a graphic to award to the books you like. http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f21/srnamepending/ia_award.jpg
They key to self-published books is Professional editing. And I’m not talking about having your parents, your spouse and your neighbor editing your manuscript. Professional.
Geezus, I agree with you Ilona, about valuing your work, and not accepting sub-par just to try and make a quick buck, it’s almost like taking advantage of the consumer. Joe Schmoe says “hm, It’s only .99 I’m sure someone will buy it, and who cares if they hate it, it was a buck anyway” and then they suddenly have 500 people who bought their piece of crap book, and that, to me, is thieving. I may be out only a buck, but you made money on crap. It is in poor form.
I get so many requests for reviews from self-pub authors and half the time the excerpts they send me are laden with spelling errors and typos galore. Why on earth would you send that to someone? :shakes head:
I’ve read a few awesome self pubbed books, and I have bought some really effin shitty .99 books as well. I could make a list of those
Three good ones: Susan Ee “Angelfall”, Nicholas Olivo “Imperium” and Nine Naughty Authors, “The Vampire Cowboys Secret Werewolf Babies”
*yea, I know, that last sounds ridiculous, and it was meant to be that way, it’s a parody of all things romance and fantasy, and I laughed my ass off. It was worth the .99 to me.*
I’m as psyched for a badge that declares a book to have a cliff hanger ending as I am for blogs to give authors “not crap” badges for their books.
I resent buying a story and getting to the end only to find that I’ve only gotten part of a story. I do not find this situation titillating at all, in spite of current marketing trends.
I resent it. A lot. I’m finding that I’m not the only person who resents it, either. Once an author does that they go off my auto-buy list and chances are pretty good I won’t read another book in the series until the series is over. It’s a broken trust and I don’t much care if my not buying another book reduces their chances of renewing a contract.
It’s a broken trust. Did I mention I resent it? A lot.
One of my old favorite romance authors decided to start writing some urban fantasy/paranormal romance type books. Her previous books were all pretty much self contained. Her newer series actually angers me because every. single. book. has. a. cliffhanger. I also felt these books were not as well developed as her romances, because there were questions that were never answered and were just dragged out for 4 books. I know people LOVE this series, and I just can’t understand it. I read the first three and I was happyish, although I really hated the cliffhanger endings, but book 4 I couldn’t even finish. I feel like I was given a bit of a cake and promised more and then she threw it out a window
.
My sister pointed me to a website because she thought it was a job for book reviewers – it was actually more like “we give you the book for free, and you get to review it.” Every single one of those books was below my expectations in writing technique, except for one, which just had a really crappy story. The crappy story one was a book of sonnets which together told the story of a group of vampires… and there was no real reason to care for any of the characters, not even the “main” character and the love interest. All the other books were so badly edited, at times they were hard to read – we’re talking paragraphs that end with an incomplete sentence. Many of the books were self published, some in paperback form, some in digital form. I thought maybe the reason for the bad editing was because these were self published and the authors did not have the same resources as a house publisher. On every single one of my reviews, I did give this explanation, or some mention of it. The person who ran the reviews ended up leaving me a nasty note on my blog saying that these books got twice as much editing and revision as books published in bigger companies. If so, why were they so badly done? One of the authors told me I “didn’t get it” because it was meant for “young adults.” I am a 26 year old college graduate and I majored in English literature… if I can’t understand a book meant for young adults, do you really think young adults would understand it? My major complaints were about her characterization and inconsistencies, and it’s not like the book even had any kind of mystery. When you have basic language and punctuation problems on top of that, there’s a problem.
I just felt like sharing, because I have the same rage that you do against substandard publications.
Oh, I have read some stinkers and a few really great works. I am disappointed with the lack of care some put into their “babies” before releasing them. I have cut way back on exploring these new authors.
U take a risk with any book. I just think we use to get better books for $.99. Who knew thew would churn out crap.
One of the things I have a hard time with self published books, is when the author and friends bombard the reviews with “best book ever!!!” on pure crap books.
I now always read the negative reviews, that can be pretty telling, and help sell the book.
Be very wary of too high of praise. Sad but true.
Would goodreads count as a rss reader? Since I follow your blog from there.
I was excited to dive into the top 100 free list for Kindle. By day 3 I was muttering about the drivel. After patiently listening to a scathing review of my latest read my husband asked “and how much did you pay for this book?”. Yes, less than $1. Still, it should be grammatically correct and have a decent story! So, I agree with you Ilona. I am also following the advice in the other comments to read the reviews before – even if it is free.
I access your blog through goodreads, so if you do anything fancy it won’t translate well.
I use Goodreads to get great recommendations, but it does require at least a bit of an effort.
You’ll at least need to scan your books into you goodreads, using the Android or iPhone app, to be able to get recommendations out of the site.
However the great recommendations I’ve gotten through the site was when I chatted with others and could tell them why I liked a certain book.
It is a bit like wading through a swamp when browsing the Kindle eBook genre sections loaded with 1.99/.99 books. However, I will say that occasionally, sometimes if you are very patient, you can find some real gems written by self-published authors. You have to be willing to download the first chapter samples and read through them – never trust the reviews! As a caveat I have to admit this is rare – I’ve owned a Kindle for 2 years and in that time I have found 4 or 5 self-published authors that I like. But I am a voracious reader, so any new author is a joy to discover!
I browse your website by computer ^^.
Also I’m looking forward in buying an Kindle, it seems so popular nowadays. Everyone get’s one and I feel left alone. I guess I’ll have to make that big step and buy one.
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