The ebook revolution has had a perhaps seismic effect on the future of publishing in more ways than one. One of the most interesting developments is the proliferation of self-published books. Now it is easier than ever for an author to get their work to readers as the cost barrier surrounding printing books has been removed.
I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that, as far as I know, I have never read a self-published novel. Admittedly, until I got my Kindle at Christmas I hadn’t really had access to any. Most of my book buying took place in bookshops where only the ‘proper’ publishers were on display.
I was also wary of the quality conundrum. I think that only the most fervent self-publishing advocates would deny that, on average, published books are likely to be better than self-published books. They have already been through several layers of acceptance, from agents and publishers, whereas anyone can self-publish anything as an ebook. With a traditionally published book you at least know that someone other than the author has given it their seal of approval.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that all self-published books are bad, any more than it means that all traditionally published books are good. But the quality control process has been removed. You can argue that Virginia Woolf was self-published, but that certainly doesn’t make every self-publisher a Woolf.
So are there any self-published Woolfs out there today? Or perhaps to be more realistic, are the top self-published novels of a similar standard to the top published ones?
I’m not in a position to do a blind test, however, I have downloaded the Kindle samples of the six novels from the 2010 Booker shortlist and also six self-published / small publisher titles from Amazon’s Top 150 ebooks. I will read the samples then assess the books and rank them in order of the likelihood of me buying the full novel. I haven’t read any of these books before and all the authors are new to me so it will be interesting to see how this experiment turns out.
The books to read are:
Booker shortlist
Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America
Emma Donoghue, Room
Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room
Andrea Levy, The Long Song
Tom McCarthy, C
Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question
Self-published
Lauren Burd, Immortal
Ali Cooper, The Girl on the Swing
CS Marks, Elfhunter
Lexi Revellian, Remix
Kenneth Rosenberg, No Cure for the Broken Hearted
Patsy Whyte, No Easy Road
Will any of the popular self-published books be able to match up to the Booker titles? I’ll post the results here over the next few days.
What effect if any will genre have on your test results? The Booker tends towards literary fiction, whereas some of the self-published titles *cough* are commercial fiction...
ReplyDeleteHi Lexi. I read and enjoy a wide variety of genres so hopefully that will cancel out any difference between them. When I selected the self-published books, I deliberately excluded genres that I would never read in order to give the self-published books a fair chance. Plus I will be ranking the books in terms of how likely I am to read on, rather than any perceived literary merits or writing style. So far I am half way through the Booker books and will be reading the self-published samples in the next few days.
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ReplyDeleteHello, my name is Lynn O'Dell. I am the publisher of "Red Adept Reviews."
ReplyDelete"Immortal," by Lauren Burd, was published without editing. Ms. Burd recently decided to use my Editing Service for her novel.
We have just completed the editing process, and Ms. Burd is working on the formatting prior to uploading the new version.
I respectfully request that you wait until the new version is uploaded prior to doing any sort of review, even on the sample.
I am certain that Ms. Burd would be happy to provide you with a copy of the edited version of her novel.
Hi Lynn - thanks very much for your comments and its interesting to hear about the changes that have been made to Immortal. However, I will keep my review as it is, as it was my genuine opinion of the version that was available at the date it was written. If Ms Burd didn't want people to review that version, then she really shouldn't have put the novel on sale to the public.
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking the time to reply and good luck to Ms Burd on her future projects.