Ever since the Kindle came out there has been a boon in
the self-publishing industry. It
started with people taking works from the public domain and “selling” them on
Amazon. So, if you searched for
Great Expectations you would find 20 different listings with various prices
even though the original is free to all.
Then we started getting a bunch of free books that were self
published originals and were basically just converted Word documents that had
no editing or real literary worth.
Then we started to see a push towards getting things cleaned
up, and self-published authors finding mainstream success. Some authors took down the
self-published links and replaced them with traditional publishers, while
others left their publishers and took on the tasks themselves.
When I first got my Kindle I would try anything for free but have pulled back because
there are some real stinkers out there.
Just recently, I found a YA self-published book called Wraith that looked interesting,
and was free, so I picked it up.
To be fair it is one of the better free book I have read, but to also be fair it
needs some work. I think the idea
of self publishing is very exciting, but there is an over all hint of lazy that
I find attached to it.
This book had a pretty good plot, a bit too familiar, but pretty good,
and the writing is good. But there
were too many mistakes with easy fixes and that drives me
crazy! You need to use the right
word, and you need to have things stay consistent, and you need to use punctuation
correctly. Authors are excited to
share their work and that makes me excited but it does need to be done well.
So
this book isn’t great, but I also don’t want to discourage anyone, because the
talent is there. I would just say
that readers are fickle so slow down, take time to get it as close to perfect
as you can, and invest a bit in your product.
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