Here’s a hint for you: I didn’t look up your profile to get “ammunition” on you or any of the other people with whom I disagree here or in any other thread.
Here’s a hint for you: if you place your web site in your Straight Dope public profile, there is nothing wrong with looking at it to see if you are a writer I’m familiar with (I’ve looked up RealityChuck, too, for instance.) I had no way of knowing that something with it’s own link on a public web site that you have listed in your public profile on the Straight Dope was a sooper special sekrit. (I see that you have now deleted the link.)
Frankly, I wasn’t looking for ammunition to use against you, I was curious if the group of writers that you talked to every day rhymed with grad gruppies. (Didn’t see you there, though, other than a reader comment on Brad T’s site about how if the Hugos were done right you would be getting nominations.)
Okay Darren, I apologize. I’ve actually had people here do some sketchy shit like leaving bad reviews for books they hadn’t read, and while I didn’t remove the link from my profile, I did remove it from my signature back when I was a contributing member. I got the vibe you were doing the same thing and I’m sorry, I was incorrect.
No, I have no involvement with the Sad Puppies and honestly couldn’t care less about awards…I mean, if I got one by some miracle, that would be great, but I don’t at all follow who gets nominated or who wins.
At this point in my life, the only awards I care about are the ones deposited monthly in my account by Amazon that pay off my bills. Maybe I’m old and jaded, but that’s what having one kid in college and another in HS will do to you.
I broke even with my first book. But it took me ten years.
for that reason, my second book had only four illustrations in it. It wasn’t as satisfying, but it broke even sooner.
Just curious, how much did she have to spend to produce the book if the advance will only allow her to break even?
My first thought (which I think has been somewhat validated by the discussion) is that I imagine it is similar to record labels in a few ways. At a certain point in time if you said such and such album was released by such and such label, it carried weight AND helped you obtain it easier. This could apply to both major and indie and genre specific labels (or even something like CDBaby). In pre-Amazon times even notable labels/releases might not get much shelf space, especially if you were into indie rock, hip-hop, death metal, or whatever non top-40. Sometimes you could order it at a record store or contact a label directly, do mail order. Also, some labels just gave any release cachet and some people might even buy every release on a specific label.
Now, it’s almost meaningless, especially when there are musicians who release records on their own labels (or free via email) and make millions of dollars and aren’t seen as less legitimate than if they had accepted less money to brag about being “signed” (and likely have their projects shelved or in label limbo). But I think it’s still usually a thing that’s noted.
So you admit you don’t read them, but you know that they are poorly written. Interesting. How can you come to a conclusion as to their quality?
Bad writing exists, but you won’t find it in the major publishers. No one stays in business selling things that people don’t want. A publisher would go out of business very quickly selling crap.
Maybe *you *don’t like a book, but you aren’t the only book buyer in the world. Publishers are not there to fill out what you personally think is a good book. And everyone has a different opinion about what they think quality is. You are setting yourself as the ultimate arbiter of What Is Good. Fortunately, you’re not.
And if you think publisher publish crap, you ought to look at what’s being published by Amazon. The level of quality is far worse than anything put out by a commercial publisher.
[Moderating]
It looks like this situation might already be resolved, but just a reminder to everyone: Don’t put any information in your public profile that you don’t want to be public. If you don’t want other board members finding something, don’t make it available.
I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about anymore. You sound like you’re having a conversation with someone else. I hope someday you find who that person is, perhaps what you’re saying will make sense to them.
Well, I can understand why they don’t make sense to you, but they do make sense to people who have paid attention to what you’ve been saying.
Your claim is simply “I didn’t like some books published by the commercial publishers. Therefore they don’t publish good books.”
You can walk away from what you’re saying, but that doesn’t win the argument.
Any really, why are you so bothered by all this? By your account, you’ve done fine self-publishing. Why do you find it necessary to continually attack commercial publishers? How have they hurt you (other than by rejecting you)? What have they done to you to make you condemn all their output (including things you’ve never read)?
See, there you go again, saying things that sound like they came from another conversation. You may have the idea that I’m upset at the publishing industry, but that’s entirely from your own mind. I’m not upset at anyone. I simply have a realistic idea of how the industry works. You have an idealized, unrealistic idea of how it works.
Does that mean I have to take down my naked pictures? That’s gonna make a big dent in my Private Messages.
If you want your privates to get messages, make them get their own account.
It’s interesting how you can always tell the fiction writers from the non-fiction ones in these discussions… and the genre fic ones from the mainstream.