to think that there should be a warning on self-published books on Amazon, so that...

[ElizaPickford]

... 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?

Wool is brilliant. Or Rachael Lucas's lovely Sealed With A Kiss which got taken up by a publisher after it sold really well.

The really bad stuff though, I don't believe it's that they can't afford to pay for help, it's that they are not setting their standards high enough (perhaps not even realising they need to).

I was on a writers' forum on Goodreads and someone was asking for advice about how to market his book better because it hadn't sold many. Any.

Turned out he had basically just shoved the first draft of his first attempt at a scifi up on Kindle and was then wondering why it didn't sell. There's no way he should have been publishing it - he should have been asking for beta readers not buyers, or even, doing some very basic work on learning how to write. But he simply didn't realise. And everyone was pussyfooting around giving him 'helpful' marketing advice rather than the tough love he needed.

Rachael Lucas is one of my best friends but even if she wasn't I'd have to agree that Sealed with a Kiss is brilliant. I'm the 'Melanie' who gets thanked for 'eels' in the acknowledgements!

GoooRooo - Ihired an editor, someone to format both the paperback and ebook and a graphic designer to do the cover. It cost quite a bit but, I hope, the result is that you wouldn't know it's self published. Unfortunately not all authors can afford to do that and as a result some of the self published fiction I've read has been truly awful.

True, but it's not all down to money. It also depends on talent and hard work too - if a self-pubbing author works at their craft to make sure their book is as good as possible, asks friends to read it and give honest feedback, writes more than one draft of their book, reads widely, makes sure the book is free from spelling and grammar errors, then they won't necessarily have to pay to have it edited to have a good book but of course it would be better to have all books edited

Could you post a link to your book? Or PM me?

Amethyst and MmeGuillotine - could you post links to your books? Am always on the lookout for new authors :)

Cocktail, this is my most recent one! It's not a novel though, it's a biography of Marie Antoinette!

(Well done me for going to Amazon to get the link and RESISTING the urge to read any reviews!)

Reviews are useful, though, MmeGuillotine. Or they can be. Do you really not read any?

I edit, too BTW My genre is erotica and yes, there are some utterly, utterly awful books labelled as such, and yes I do blame EL James or rather the publishers who hyped that pile of crap up to the extent that a million semi-literate fucknuggets have decided that they, too, can make enough to retire on with formulaic, atrociously-written 'erotic romance'. There are also appalling blogs and advice sites telling people that writing erotica is an easy way to make money when it really, really isn't. Most of the people I know who write erotica are a bit miserable and disillusioned at the moment (especially the good, innovative, really readable ones) because it's getting so hard to attract any attention. Though a fair few of us are working on ways to improve things...

Nope, I never do. I ought to add that I suffer from severe depression and anxiety and have become avoidant of anything that might set it off, which is one of the reasons why I don't read them. Another reason is that once I've finished a book, I'm pretty bored with it and don't actually care what people think - I've already moved on to the next!

My publisher and husband read them though and report back anything interesting.

Here you go CocktailQueen. I will warn you though it has a very niche audience! I never wrote a book to make money, I wrote it to give me a bit more authority in my field.

www.amazon.co.uk/How-get-job-Sarah-Stimson/dp/1492944289/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441992110&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+get+a+job+in+pr

An old school friend of mine self publishes for Kindle. She writes science fiction mainly for young adults. To call her writing dire and her talent virtually non existent would be an understatement. In fairness, she does sometimes give the books away as free downloads rather than charging.

CQ, I'm sorry but I'm a bit reluctant to out myself If you like romantic comedy you might have come across my books though

Has anyone succeeded in getting poetry published? A friend of mine writes poetry and a lot of her friends coo about it and tell her she should 'get it published'. Lets just say it isn't to my taste.

Larry, she needs to begin by submitting her work to poetry magazines, and might subsequently try to interest a poetry publishing house in a collection. A good writing group would probably help her assess whether her work has genuine potential at this point.

But 'you should have it published' from friends is completely meaningless unless your friends are also ruthlessly honest and well-read in that particular genre.

Thanks Stormcoat. That is what DH said to her. He works helping authors, in a specific genre, but has no knowledge of poetry. Glad he said the right thing.

OH self-publishes his science fiction to Kindle. He did it to gauge interest as he'll be looking for a literary agent once he finishes his creative writing degree.

I'm currently trying to decide whether I self-publish my non-fiction book to gauge interest or whether I just go for it and see if I can get a literary agent to go about it the traditional way.

Dinosaur space erotica is the funniest example of the godawful consequences of letting just anyone self-publish oh and the Ravished By A Millionaire Were-Bear series.

Hey now, let's not judge the erotica series! Some of those writers make many of the moolah from that stuff. If I could write sexily about millionaire were bears I'd be straight on it

Tbf I've read some great self published, better then published, but it's weeding them out. YANBU to think there should be some basic minimum criteria though- good punctuation, spelling, formatting etc- and that without it a buyer can get a refund.

www.bookbub.com

For your DH, a lot is self published but they are free so if shit-no worries!

What's the word count btw? If it's over 50k then I wonder if it's a badly edited nanowrimo fic.

Some self published books, like the op's example, aren't worth bothering with. But there are some which could be very good if only the author was willing to do the work. I read a historical crime recently - great setting, the author had clearly done his research, he created a real sense of place and atmosphere. But the whole thing was let down by poor punctuation and long rambling sentences that often didn't make sense, if you could get through them. A good editor could have cleaned it up with no problem, or the author could have taken the time to learn the nuts and bolts for himself. I thought it was a shame that he wasn't achieving his full potential as a writer.

I followed the link the OP gave and happened across Terri Grace, purveyor of 'clean Christian romance'. I am very intrigued by her 'mail-order bride, series (crippled mail-order bride; burned but beautiful mail-order bride, overweight mail-order bride for half blind Dr etc)

I'm working on the first draft of my novel now. I know a couple of people who've self-published and their books have been okay - some not quite my thing in terms of subject/storyline, but published with few errors.

I'll take a look at the link so I can figure out what to avoid doing!

Do not omit to get an editor, Pedestriana. Or, if you are really short of money I am cheap get a friend to read the whole thing before you publish. But pick a friend who is really good at spelling and grammar and who reads a fair bit in the genre you want to publish. Nothing should ever go out without being shown to a second pair of eyes as every author becomes slightly blind to their own errors by the time a book is finished.

Oh and the gay-billionaire-werewolf/unicorn hybrid stuff is now pretty much over, as even more bandwagon-jumpers think they can do that, too. FWIW I have some admiration for some of the people doing that, even though most of the stories are very short and not all that well written - I admire them for coming up with the concepts, and also for the time and effort they put into their cover art.
King of the lot is Chuck Tingle. I am really starting to want to go for a pint with Chuck Tingle. He's not just a peddler of strange erotica, but he's topical with it.

I just spent a happy but incredulous half an hour reading from the free extracts of the Anne of green gables tripe and the suffragette sisters books.

I am appalled, in a fascinated and highly amused way. Seriously, this could become a whole new time wasting hobby for me, reading diabolical self published fiction written by deluded people.

Sorry for lack of capitals/punctuation, just learning to type on my new iPad.