Amazon Self Publishing

[beebe918]

As a general rule I don't buy self published books unless they are recommended by someone whose opinion I trust.  Mostly because I find they are often very poorly edited.

I recently read Flat-Out Love and loved it so I bought Flat-Out Matt and Flat-Out Celeste on Amazon.  I noticed a few l mistakes in both and went looking for the editor's and publisher's name and discovered they were self published via Amazon.  The most interesting thing is the back page of the book says Made in the USA and says it was printed at a facility about an hour from my house the same day I ordered in on Amazon.  I had no idea this was a thing!

I think the on demand publishing thing is very cool and perhaps I need to give self publishing another chance as I love this series.  

[peanutmuse]

Very cool.

By the way, I love love love the name Jack. It was one of my top contenders, but alas, the husband did not like it. Boo.

[Irishcurls]

I will say, my cousin has recently started self-publishing and I got roped into beta reading for her and on her "street team" on Facebook....I finally had to extricate myself from it all because I found the community a bit petty and the authors were definitely quantity over quality...I did find some definitely decent reads out of it, but I agree with you it's hit or miss.

[owlishbookish]

There are some truly atrocious self pubbed authors out there. I had to stop reviewing self pubbed books due to the increase of verbal attacks. It's just not worth it with some going so far as to dig up information on reviewers and releasing it to the public. It's some scary stuff.

[peanutmuse]

Feb 1, 2015 15:25:19 GMT -5 owlishbookish said:

There are some truly atrocious self pubbed authors out there. I had to stop reviewing self pubbed books due to the increase of verbal attacks. It's just not worth it with some going so far as to dig up information on reviewers and releasing it to the public. It's some scary stuff.

Eek.

[numbbears]

I download a lot of self pub books on my Kindle. There have been some really good ones and some really awful ones.

[Irishcurls]

Feb 1, 2015 16:05:51 GMT -5 peanutmuse said:

Feb 1, 2015 15:25:19 GMT -5 owlishbookish said:

There are some truly atrocious self pubbed authors out there. I had to stop reviewing self pubbed books due to the increase of verbal attacks. It's just not worth it with some going so far as to dig up information on reviewers and releasing it to the public. It's some scary stuff.

Eek.

I totally believe this. I'm allegedly also the only non-5 star review for one book on Goodreads....f'real? 5 stars are reserved for actual literature I can't stop thinking about. Everything else gets a 3. 

[ubergrun]

I would say my reading list lately has been about 50/50 for indie authors and traditionally published authors. I find it difficult to take a work seriously if it has major editing errors (traditionally published works aren't immune to bad editing but it's true that a lot of self-published authors don't polish things up enough for primetime). Hugh Howey and Paul Draker are two of my favorite indie authors, and their stuff is well-edited. I'm especially fond of Hugh, who is active on social media, not a major douche, and has had plenty of works for me to not yet have worked through them all. I've slogged through some unimpressive indie lit (usually free or cheap) but don't bother writing reviews, I just do star ratings. Much of what I've found that I've loved has been via word of mouth and recs from authors I already like. So there's good stuff out there, but it does sometimes seem like there's an overwhelming ratio of crap to gold.

I usually buy Kindle editions so when there's a sample available, that helps me decide if I'm going to buy the whole work to read. For print, I'd rather get things through the library (and I sometimes get e-books via my library system, too) so there's no $ investment to find out if something's to my taste.

[setsuna17]

I'm a book snob, so I don't read self pubbed stuff unless it's from an author (already published) that I like. I don't have a lot of time to read, and errors will piss me off, so I try to stay away from indie stuff. That being said, I like to write novels (up to 100 pages, then I give up) and I still don't think think I would self pub. If you're good, there are still companies that do only e-books that will publish you.

[Unknown]

Wool was self published by Hugh Howey, and that series was fantastic. I usually stay away from self publish w/o a strong recommendation.