... you don't end up spending actual money on the biggest pile of self indulgent, unedited, garbled bollocks by someone with the writing ability of an eight year old?
My poor DH recently bought me a book as a gift because it was about a subject I'm interested in and at a glance it had 5 stars and great reviews. I was looking forward to reading it, but when I picked it up on holiday I found it had capital letters randomly strewn throughout sentences, not a speech mark IN THE ENTIRE BOOK and as for the story line; it was so unbelievably incoherent and shit I was amazed. On closer inspection obviously someone (with no grasp of grammar or language) has just cobbled some ridiculous thoughts together and my well meaning DH actually spent a whole £6 on it.
This makes me really angry. I'm sure that there are perks to self publishing, but I really think there should be a warning somewhere so that you know that you could be buying utter drivel. It seems very unfair and almost fraudulent. I'm thinking I should create a coffee table compilation of my youngest child's most fantastical line drawings and charge unsuspecting victims customers £15 for a hardback edition.
IABU?
AIBU?
to think that there should be a warning on self-published books on Amazon, so that...
ElizaPickford · 11/09/2015 12:50
to everyone on here who has said nice things about self-published books! As a self-published author I share the OP's frustration, not least because it gives a bad impression of self-publishing and you end up with people assuming ALL self-published stuff is bad.
The reality is that when a publisher makes a decision on a book, the priority is that the sums have to add up. You can have a book that the editorial department loves and thinks could win prizes, but the sales and marketing dept say sorry, it's great but the sales projections (based on typical sales in the genre) are too low. In some genres it can be very hard to get started, because new authors typically sell fewer books, so that feeds into very low projections for a book which, if it was by an established author, would be a good solid bet. Likewise if an established author writes a book that is a flop, they can find themselves being dropped by their publisher and have trouble getting back into the game with their next book.
Self-publishing is therefore now being used by professional writers as well as inexperienced ones. It's also being used by established authors to get their out-of-print books back in print. You won't necessarily notice these books are self-published, though, because they can have professional editing and cover design. Some of the top literary agencies have set up their own imprints so although their authors are essentially self-pubbing, no-one notices because they have a plausible-sounding publisher name attached to it (and the books are good!)
For this reason I'm not in favour of warnings about books being self-published. It would be nice if there was a big, widely-recognised accreditation scheme for self-published books produced to a professional level - one or two have been set up in the US but they're not well-known enough yet to really make a difference here. For now, I am just very careful to read the blurb and the extract. Writing a blurb is hard so very few really rubbishy books have a decent blurb - it's usually a giveaway before you even get to the extract.
That is dire. Never trust anything self-published that only has 5 star reviews - it's a sure sign that only the author's mates and family have read it and would give them 5 stars if they wiped their arse and self-published the shitty loo paper.
I have a friend who self-publishes; when a new novel comes out he tries to get everyone to give it 5 star reviews - apparently it doesn't matter if you haven't read it 
. When I told him that the exclusively 5 star reviews for his godawful mess novel written by Amazon customers who had only reviwed his books (and nothing else, ever) were a dead giveaway that he'd just got his mates to write them, he told me it didn't matter because the people who buy novels in this genre are thick and won't notice. Oddly enough, I haven't rushed to catch up with him since then.
Typed a long post and lost it.
Briefly, Amazon cracked down on reviews a while back when some well known authors who should have known better were outed as having posted anonymous negative reviews on competitors' books, whether or not they deserved it. Genuine reviewers and authors have been caught in the fallout.
I'm another self-published author. I pay handsomely to have my books professionally edited and the covers designed. There is an awful lot of bad writing out there by both traditionally published and self-published authors - the look inside feature is a god-send and Amazon is very good about refunds. Incidentally, I was offered a traditional deal but turned it down on my agent's advice, because she said I would make more money self-publishing in my genre (and she was right).
But look at the books "written" by Katie Price, for example - traditionally published, error-free for the most part, but still a load of shite 
Yours? (Nosy!)Haha, it was tough at first but now I just never even think about looking! I keep telling author friends to stop looking when they get upset about some nit picky review on Amazon or Goodreads but they're hooked on the angst of it all, I think!
I just prefer to think of reviews as being for other readers, not writers and to assume that if someone REALLY badly wants to give me direct feedback then they'll get in touch. Luckily I only get fan mail...
If you're bothered by a bad review though, I found that the best thing to do is to go and look at the one star reviews of your favourite books. It's very therapeutic and serves as a great reminder that one readers shit heap is another's pile of diamonds. Or something. It's been a long day, I'm all out of metaphors...
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