Reading/Writing Self-Published Books - Have You?

Cafe Society
1

I was just gifted a Nook by my older brother…he has lots of books on it (crime/adventure) by well-known authors and they are pretty good.

However, when I went to the Barnes & Noble site to see what they had for sale, especially in the Gay books section, I saw there were lots and lots of FREE books that look like they were uploaded by self-publishing authors.

I suppose that is kind of cool - allowing readers to download free books, and allowing authors to at least get people to read their work and perhaps build a fan base or get published “for real” at some later stage?

  1. Just wondering if any of you have read these self-published books? My guess is quality and talent will vary to extremes?

  2. Also, have any of you submitted your own books - at least to the Nook bookstore? How does that work - any success or interesting feedback?

2

I’ve written and published my own novel as an ebook and paperback. I published through Amazon’s Kindle Direct, for ebook (paperback through Createspace), as well as Smashwords. Smashwords works with many other retailers (including Barnes and Noble) to offer the book. Right now it’s only on Amazon- I took it off Smashwords and affiliates temporarily to take advantage of some bonus promotions Amazon offers if you go exclusively with them.

As to quality and talent- yes, it varies to extremes. Many books have free samples available, even if they are for sale- so it’s usually not too hard to determine at least if the book is total crap or not.

3

I’ve written and published two novels in my series, and am working on a third. You can check them out for the Nook hereand here, or on Amazon hereand here(more reviews plus Look Inside) if you’re interested in dark urban fantasy/horrorish sort of stuff.

As for quality and talent, all I can say is: read the “Look Inside” bit or get a preview before you buy. There are some truly appallingly bad self-published books out there, and sadly it seems like they outnumber the good ones. You can usually tell from the sample whether the author has a basic understanding of things like grammar, spelling, pacing, and other things that make novels unreadable (to me) if they’re lacking.

4

I’ve read parts of one, written by a professional athlete who quit soccer because of racism, and then travelled around the world.

I read it because I was working with him and it sounded interesting.

Never…ever…again .

5

I’ve read a few. The quality on average is lower than the writing you’d find in a mainstream book. Which is not to say you can’t find good writing in self-published books and bad writing in mainstream books.

6

The signal to noise ratio in self published fiction is no greater than in that published by the major companies. It’s more a matter of the sheer volume of it and the truism that 90 percent of everything is shit.

7

Quality varies, but I’d say the percentages are no worse than when paper publishing ruled the roost. The big issue with self-publishing is the editing/proofreading. There’s one I’ve got that’s entertaining, but one of the minor character’s name changes midway and every instance of “arrived” has “arraigned” in place, though no one in the book is ever in a courtroom.