The glow blogger/author Bryon Quertermous sees outside his window tonight is from the horde of enraged, self-published authors burning his effigy. He took a shot at self-published e-authors and their readers today on the aptly named Do Some Damage blog that isn't going to make him a lot of friends among the "indie writer" crowd. He wrote, in part:
[…] Other than improper use of grammar, mistakes regarding guns, and swearing, nothing seems to bother the legion of readers snapping up these Kindle books for $.99 with awful writing, poorly developed characters, and stories that just generally drip crap out of every electronic orifice. […] But it doesn't seem to bother readers. Sure, they'll comment on it in an Amazon review or whatever, but then mention that they still loved the story and will buy the next book by the author.
But my biggest insult comes from the fact that they don't seem to distinguish AT ALL the difference between an author who has slaved and sacrificed and put in the hard work to make their book the best they can be then run the gauntlet of gatekeepers, rules, traditions, whims, luck, and corporate landmines that hold together the publishing industry or the author who gave up on the traditional route and slapped up a rough draft with some zippy copy and a garish self-designed cover with some blurbs from their mom and their old aunts writing group. It's hard some days when the writing isn't coming or the rejections are coming too fast and I want to give up. But I've known all along that I don't just want to be published, I want to be published right. Call me elitist, call me traditional or stuffy or whatever, but that's what I signed on for and that's what I'm working toward.
So do you agree with him? Or are you going to bring the matches to the effigy-burning?
I agree with him. When I watch TV I don’t want to see home movies, it’s the same with reading, I want a polished draft worthy of my time.
I agree with him. I barely have time to read even a quarter of the good fiction I want to read. I liken reading unedited, novice writing to watching other peoples home movies on TV, I just don’t want to see that s***, and I definitely don’t have time to filter through it all.
Published right–I’m not sure what that is. As for the $.99 ebooks, I haven’t read those. God help me, I’m still in the public library. LOL. I suppose he can rant about unskilled authors, about idiotic readers, and about the unfairness of it all. In his defense, I have read that agents serve the purpose of sorting through all the rubbish so we don’t have to. Maybe they are missed. Still if these writers are so bad, shouldn’t he be able to rise above them? And if the readers are stupid, does he not find it easy to con them? He obviously has his own standards. Why not write pieces that meet those standards and be pleased with it? If it is “success” he wants, he has the tools, his mind and his words. Yes, foul language turns up frequently. Even so, some people have a way with dirty words.
There are plenty of professional writers who sell stinky prose despite the gatekeepers, and I am picky about which of them I give money to in exchange for entertainment.
I’m just as hard on the “indies”. I’ve yet to read a sample of any Kindle self-pub effort by an unknown that was worth a penny of my hard-earned cash.
Yes, there may be gems in that vast, dark pit, but life’s too short to dig through the crap to find them. It’s easier to go to a store or library to find the works that have been cleaned up and polished.
On the other hand, one cannot argue with the fact that people are buying the stuff.
It’s cheap, undemanding entertainment. Not everyone can afford Macy’s or what’s wanted isn’t in stock, so they check out the garage sales. They find something they see as nifty while others groan in despair at their taste.
Are the earnings of those garage sale writers on a par with those of a pro? Probably not.
However, 10-100 sales to a self-pub writer is a major triumph and worthy of the same level of celebration as a pro whose book has earned out its advance and is collecting royalties.
I can understand the reasons why a frustrated writer might take that route, but expect me to get annoyed when they smugly tell neos that it’s the only route.
Yeah, I know it’s not going to make me any friends, but it needs to be said.
I don’t think it’s just books though, I think the average American with regard to television, books, movies, food, cars, homes, clothing, and just about anything else we can purchase has no appreciation of quality. We (and I sadly include myself in this as well) are happier to buy 100 cheap items from Walmart than one quality item that will last. We’ve become a disposable culture with disposable values.
It would help if he adhered to ordinary grammar. The corrected sentence should read “…between authors who have slaved and sacrificed and put in hard work to make their books the best they can be…” Author should be authors to agree with their, and book should be books to agree with they. Most publishing houses still do a fairly good job of copyediting, and most self-published authors do not as far as I can see.
Eh.
After reading the excerpt, he seems to mirror your thoughts on self-published authors more than anything else.
With the news feeds full of articles about the tough financial road in front of the traditional publishers, are there slots for new writers?
And on another topic, I liked your Glades episode.
Other than improper use of grammar, mistakes regarding guns, and swearing,
Guilty.
I agree 100%.
It’s no different than law school where we had to deal with the one professor who’d seen The paper Chase. Or the boss who thought it was great for us to spend our first year making copies. It’s part of the process.
I went to Amazon to check out these self-published books. The first one I looked at had a spelling mistake in the dedication. And yeah, he thanked his mother for believing in him. It didn’t get any better from there.
The customer is always right, alas.
Funny how everyone was so excited that kids were reading the Harry Potter books, yet so dismayed when the YA market went nuts for the Twilight series.
For some genres, the market is exclusive and very demanding; for others, it’s large and relatively unconcerned with “quality”. Sucks that everyone’s tastes aren’t as refined as we think they should be, but business is business.
Not writing is as awkward for me as not eating; I don’t seem to have much choice but to make words appear on the screen. So, career decision time: I could write litfic and starve, attempt mainstream novels and compete with millions of others for a small number of publishing slots and a chance at a $5k advance for a couple years’ work outside of a “real” job I hate, or I can bask in lucrative obscurity writing manuals for software companies.
I still like to read once I’ve got the writing out of my system. I’ve decided my time is to valuable to waste it on crap, so anything I buy has to earn its place on my credit card statement.
I bought, read and enjoyed several of your ebooks. I enjoy your original stories but haven’t watched enough of the TV shows to be interested in the tie-ins.
There’s the odd blunder of grammar and usage, and a typo or two, but I forgive you.
At least there’s no risk of someone dying if there’s a mistake in what you write. As a tech writer, I’d hate to even be related to any of the people who designed and documented those CT scanners that have been baking people’s brains because the recommended settings were so wildly out of whack.
I can’t wait to see “Remaindered” — maybe I’ll learn what exactly happened to you in Spokane to inspire you to ridicule the place so delightfully.
Some time ago I read about the outcry from monks when illuminated manuscripts were kicked to the curb in favor of the printing press. I don’t know that we are at such a monumental moment–but we could be. I also read that agents serve the purpose of sorting everything so that we have quality books to read–I sometimes question their abilities. For good or bad, agents are routinely bypassed in electronic publishing. Like it or not, the killing field is leveled. We all have same weapons: experience, intelligence, words. There is no need to whine.
I agree, there’s a lot of unpolished (both writing and formatting) in the e-book field. But there are also many indie authors who have “slaved and sacrificed and put in the hard work to make their book the best they can be”, too. Unfortunately, they get lumped into the elitist landmines of people who like to categorize everything black or white.
Kindle’s “sample” feature aids discriminating readers.
The chaff will eventually fall off.
So what do you do about the untalented writers and the unsophisticated readers? Off with their heads?
My issue is not with self-published authors. My issue is with readers who don’t care about quality. My issue is with readers who do not discriminate between self-published authors and professionally published authors. I have friends and family who hold up porrly designed self-published books and ask me why it’s taken me so long to get published.
There are some great indy presses that produce top notch stuff with just as much (if not more) professionalism than the major publishers. And I’ll say it again, authors like James Patterson and Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer are still professional writers and have put in the hard work to be published professionally. Their “bad” writing is NOTHING like the bad writing of the bulk of the self-published Kindle authors.
Isn’t anybody getting tired of this argument yet? It’s been going on, virtually unchanged except for by-lines, for several months ever since you-know-who began his ebook thing. Wouldn’t our time be better spent writing? Or something even more worthwhile, like not writing?
I agree with Brian. I read the original post yesterday, when I was three sheets to the wind, and reacted angrily to it. I’m much more composed today. And I get, I think, what Byron is saying.
As with many things, however, I don’t agree with the delivery.
Lumping all self-published authors together is just as wrong as doing the same to the professionally-published crowd. I busted my hump for five years getting my first book up to snuff. Agents wouldn’t sniff it because it was way too long. Editors wouldn’t sniff it because agents wouldn’t sniff it. I’d spent far too long on it, poured too much of my soul into it, to let it wither away and die. And there are others out there like me.
Yes, readers are indiscriminate. But as someone said, whose fault is that? The education system in this country holds something to be desired, I think. However, folks need to be steered in the right direction. If people in the industry would, instead of knocking all indies, recognize the goods ones and help promote them, and vice versa, the entire publishing world would be better off for it. Because, in many ways, it’s authors who promote other authors. If a Lee Goldberg (for example), a relatively unknown pro, happens to discover an unknown self-published author whose work is fantastic and toted them as he would one of his contemporaries, wouldn’t that expand the readership of everyone involved? None of us are Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. We need to be working together, not biting each others’ heads off.
Bill,
Bryon doesn’t mirror my views. I don’t share his anger at readers…and find it baffling.
Why should readers care how hard the author worked? Or how many drafts he wrote? Or how many years he slaved to get published? Or how many hoops he had to jump through to get into print? All that matters is whether the book is any good.
But unfortunately, most of the self-published work that I have read or sampled is awful, not just in terms of story-telling, but in terms of basic writing skills. And that’s where Bryon and I agree.
It’s certainly made me less likely to sample or buy self-published fare…and I suspect the same is true for a lot of Amazon customers.
Yes, there IS good self-published work out there. My fear is that readers will become jaded very fast when it comes to self-published fare, and that it will have a negative effect on all of us. There’s a real risk that readers are going to associate any ebook with a low price tag on it, or that’s from a writer or publisher they don’t know, or that has an unprofessional cover, with unreadable crap…and that will hurt all authors, “indie” or not. My view is that any “indie” writer who is not concerned about this issue is in denial…or terrified of being ostracized and castigated by his fellow “indie” writers.
As I have said here before, just because all it takes is one mouse-click to publish your work, that doesn’t mean that you should do it. You aren’t doing yourself, or readers, or other “indie” writers out there, any favors by publishing work that’s sub-standard. It poisons the well for everybody.
Or, to use a food analogy, if you get food poisoning going to cheap taco places, you’re going to stop going to taco places, even though there are great ones out there. And then all the taco places lose.
Lee
This is one of many arguments against self-publishing that seem to keep popping up again and again. Others include “I like the smell of paper”, “ebooks hurt my eyes”, “you can only succeed if you have a platform.”
I encourage all writers to not worry about what their peers are doing. Who cares if there is crap out there? How does that effect you personally?
My advice: Don’t write crap.
Then you can self-publish without any worry. Problem solved.
As for worrying about readers being too lenient on crap–well, no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
People can judge what they want to read for themselves. Jumping on a high horse and bemoaning everything you think sucks is silly and wrong-headed at best, sour grapes at worst.
Write good books. Keep writing them. You’ll find an audience. And I predict you’ll have a better chance of finding that audience on Kindle than you would in the traditional publishing world, because NY is making too many mistakes these days to even keep track of them all.
Or, to use a food analogy, if you get food poisoning going to cheap taco places, you’re going to stop going to taco places, even though there are great ones out there. And then all the taco places lose.
And that’s why none of us watch movies or TV anymore.
Oh, wait. We still DO watch movies and TV, even though we’ve all seen a ton of crap.
Come on, Lee. The “5 million crappy ebooks on Kindle will ruin it for everyone” argument is played out. Amazon makes it VERY easy to find what you’re looking for, and browse new titles, and sample for free ones you’re on the fence about.
There are already 630,000 ebooks on Amazon, and yet people still manage to find your books and my books. This won’t change, even if more crap is published.
Joe,
I know we disagree on this point… but I would argue (okay, I AM arguing)… that you are not the typical Kindle author and neither am I. You poo-poo the notion that having a platform helped you, or is helping me, and I think you’re wrong. I think having a platform helped you enormously.
Would you have your Kindle success if you hadn’t had a series of books published in hardcover and paperback by a major NY publisher? If you hadn’t toured and visit a thousand bookstores? If you hadn’t spoken at hundreds of conferences and libraries? If you hadn’t had a very popular blog? If you hadn’t had a book, published by an established publisher, that was given away free on the Kindle? We’ll never know… because you had all those things.
There’s no question that you have also succeeded on the Kindle because of shrewd marketing, the right product, and positive word of mouth… but you are the exception.
Yes, I know you’ve listed a dozen people on your blog who have sold a lot of Kindle books as well…people who have not been previously published. However, they are a tiny, TINY percentage of all the people who are uploading books to Amazon each day…the vast majority of whom will be lucky to sell a dozen copies a month to people who aren’t friends or family. You know that as well as I do.
I also disagree that crap doesn’t drive people away. Have you noticed how the audience share for network television has slipped dramatically over the last ten years? It’s not just more choice (Internet, Cable, on-Demand, etc) that has eroded that audience…it’s bad programming. Detroit turned out so many shitty cars for so long that consumers stopped buying them…and bought cars from overseas instead. Producing shit WILL turn off consumers.
It’s too soon to tell if the preponderance of self-published swill is going to make readers leery of sampling or buying self-published books…if you get stung enough, you stop doing whatever it is that got you stung in the first place.
Lee
The underlying issue is not whether the self-published have certain draftman’s skills. Many do. It is whether they have something to say, and say it well. Most don’t. Even more than a nonfiction writer, a novelist must have views and a passion to express them well. That is what makes a writer fascinating to readers. And that is what commercial publishers look for in authors. I have judged writing competitions often enough to know that the fatal flaw of so many self-published authors is that their stories are reiterations of thousands of previous ones.
you are not the typical Kindle author and neither am I. You poo-poo the notion that having a platform helped you, or is helping me, and I think you’re wrong. I think having a platform helped you enormously.
We’re not typical because we’re good writers, and the majority of newbies haven’t learned their craft yet.
As for platforms, I’m sure they help. But I believe more people are discovering our books by browsing, rather than seeking out our books because we’re known quantities.
I have two reasons to believe this.
First, because 8 out of 10 emails I get are from people being introduced to my work through my self pubbed stuff. I get four times as many fan letters from The List, Origin, Endurance, etc than I do from Jack Daniels.
Second, because all 6 of my Jack Daniels ebooks are bestsellers for my publisher. But they weren’t prior to me self-publishing, and they sell in much smaller numbers than my self-pubbed ebooks.
In other words, my self-pubbed stuff fueled the success of my traditionally pubbed stuff, not the other way around, which most people assume.
Yes, I know you’ve listed a dozen people on your blog who have sold a lot of Kindle books as well…people who have not been previously published. However, they are a tiny, TINY percentage of all the people who are uploading books to Amazon each day…the vast majority of whom will be lucky to sell a dozen copies a month to people who aren’t friends or family. You know that as well as I do.
There are many more than the dozens I mentioned. Prowl the bestseller lists.
But that isn’t the point. It is hard to succeed as a writer, period. Self-pub or traditional pub. If a lot of newbies are failing as a result of poor writing, they should fail. But some newbies are succeeding. And these are people who didn’t or couldn’t succeed in print. That says something.
I also disagree that crap doesn’t drive people away. Have you noticed how the audience share for network television has slipped dramatically over the last ten years? It’s not just more choice (Internet, Cable, on-Demand, etc) that has eroded that audience…it’s bad programming.
I can easily argue it is, indeed, more choice. We’d both be talking out of our asses, because neither of us has data to back this up.
But choice is a huge factor. My son doesn’t watch TV. He’s on YouTube two hours a day. That’s not because of crappy programming. He doesn’t know any programs at all, except for Family Guy.
Detroit turned out so many shitty cars for so long that consumers stopped buying them…and bought cars from overseas instead. Producing shit WILL turn off consumers.
I like this analogy, but not in the way you intended it. Consumers stopped buying Detroit cars because they could get cheaper, better foreign cars.
That directly relates to the publishing industry. It also predicts self-pubs will outsell the overpriced ebooks created by the entrenched establishment.
It’s too soon to tell if the preponderance of self-published swill is going to make readers leery of sampling or buying self-published books…if you get stung enough, you stop doing whatever it is that got you stung in the first place.
There’s a big difference between getting stung by a bee and reading a page of bad prose then deleting it. BIG difference.
I have faith in consumers. I believe they are good at finding what they like, even if they have to root for it. In fact, if you’ve ever browsed a used bookstore, rooting is part of the fun. Making discoveries, trying different authors, etc.
Every time we buy something, we make a decision. We weed out the good from the crap. We’re able to search for what we like, sample what we’re interested in, and make quick, fast, on-the-spot choices as to how we spend our time and our dollars.
There are over 600,000 ebooks on Amazon. Yet I’ve managed to find over 100 of them to buy for my Kindle, many of which I found by browsing. I’m not intimidated by the sheer number of books, or put off by the crap–and there is a lot of crap.
People like buffets. They like rummage sales. They like making choices and being picky and finding gems.
Hell, they like shopping.
Worrying about there being a lot of crap out these is pointless. If it’s truly crap, people won’t buy it. If they do buy it and get burned, they’ll do what everyone does–buy something else.
I have stacks of paper books I bought and didn’t read. If I see a bad TV show, I don’t stop watching TV–I just stop watching that particular show.
The crap argument is just a bad argument. It’s based on defensiveness, not reality.
Writers brought up on traditional publishing, who know how difficult it is to hone your craft and break in, are very protective about the status quo.
But this isn’t a competition. If a bunch of crap authors fail, who cares? It won’t hurt me or you.
AGREE 110%! I’ve had my share of delusional idiots argue with me on my anti-self-publishing stance. I have read digital press and self-published books (and purchased them before I knew what it was) and they were God-awful! Self-publishing only makes the self-publisher owner wealthy. The publishing industry is failing, but because of garbage trends and not because people have given up on owning print books.
What an odd argument. At first blush, it looks as though the complaint is that self-pubbed books are such crap no one will buy them. But no! The real complaint is that readers are buying them! And readers, damn the idiots, can’t tell the self-pubbed books apart from the books that went through all the hoops of trad publishing!
Hmmmmm….
This was supposed to be an argument against self-publishing? Seriously?