Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Lions, and tigers, and crappy unedited books! Oh, my!

For the sake of discussion, I need to get something off of my chest. I keep seeing writers on different blogs and loops talk about how crappy unedited books are going to hurt us as writers.

Let me see if I have this right...I think what writers are saying is that if everyone in the world throws a crappy, non-edited book on kindle it's going to hurt them, or me, or some other author.

I don't agree. I think it will only hurt THAT author. 

Whether it's books, music, or movies, people have SO many choices...BUT the decent fun books, movies and songs always seem to find their way to the top...or somewhere close to it. I've watched a lot of movies that probably never should have been made...but I could stop watching it at any time.

Readers of books can read a blurb and download a sample for FREE. That's about three chapters to figure out if they want to read that book or not. Even if they go on to buy the book, they can return it!

I think this whole "indie authors are putting out crap" is a bunch of crap. Someone needs to start giving me names and titles because I've been reading a lot of great indie books lately. I don't think the people who are worried about this have even read a book by an Indie author.

I think they're scared...of nothing. Or maybe of a little more competition.

Nobody is forcing anyone to buy a book. Whether there are one million books on Amazon or ten million, and half of them are crap, all the reader has to do is read the blurb, read the sample chapters for FREE, and then decide. I just don't get how having crappy books out there is going to hurt ME or anyone else. I really don't get it.

And, speaking of editing, I have never read a book, EVER, that didn't have typos and/or grammar problems. Suddenly this is a problem? No one has ever bought a CRAP book from Borders, Barnes & Noble, or Wal-Mart???

There are a LOT of books on Amazon that aren't selling. I think readers know what they want to read.

And still, I'm not telling writers out there to self-publish crappy, unedited books, I'm just not worried about it hurting me and my career if they do. In my opinion, a little competition, crappy or not, never hurt anyone.