Horror Aficionados discussion

I am a person who loves an open marketplace because it tends to spur creativity and innovation, however there always can be some drawbacks.

Are readers here finding that the explosion of self/indie publishing has created a sea of mediocre to bad work to wade through? Is the general marketplace's overall quality expectation far less than it used to be when large publishing houses had control over what went out? Or is the competition spurring a freshness, creativity and quality never before seen?

What have you found in your reading?

I am really curious.

The open marketplace is great, but it isn't realistic to have the same expectations of self-publishers, who are doing this on their own dime, and traditional publishers, that have the capital and resources to invest in making a book "publication ready."

Self-publishing does away with the "gatekeepers," which means there are many worthy works out there now that might never have found a place at the Big Five. Lets be grateful for that. The other side of that, though, is that even terrific (or potentially terrific) books rarely get the level of editorial and production they need because of the cost. Here's an interesting blog post that deals with this.

As a freelance editor, I can tell you it is the rare client willing or able to pay me for the number of hours it would take to make their book comparable to a traditionally published book. I get them as close as I can on their budget, but I'm only one link in the chain. There is also proofreading, formatting, and cover design. I think we have to cut indies some slack in the interest of having a rich marketplace.

Having said that, I would urge indie authors not to rush their books to market. Invest in your book if you can. If it mean as much to you as a new couch or replacing the lawn, figure it's worth at least that much. Your couch will never pay you back except in satisfaction. Why look at your book as a money pit?

If the cost of editing/proofreading is out of reach, at least find some picky beta readers.

There are subscription services, such as BookBub, which attempt to make recommendations to indie readers. But, yeah, the other issue that your question brings up is, How is a reader supposed to sift through this giant marketplace? I don't have a good answer to that.

Longhare pretty much nailed it. I will say, as an author working on his first book, I have discovered an invaluable tool for proofreading on your own. Get a nice text-to-speech application, plug in whatever document or chapter or section you wanna do, and then listen along with it. It'll highlight what it's reading as it goes, and you can listen and read along, and you'll catch typos or misplaced words. It can also help you catch odd phrasings. Also helpful. Basically, if you can't afford an editor, you can find little things to at least bump up your quality that much more.

I'd say for sifting through, maybe try being very specific in search criteria. That takes some practice because, realistically, Amazon's categories can be confusing and redundant. There's also looking through lists here on goodreads. You can usually find stuff by keywords.

Ashe, great idea. Sounds like it will make up for a lot of Spell Checks deficiencies. Plus, it'll kick out those "Ew, did I really write that?" passages. You know, the dialog that sounded better in your head, the tortured sentence that took an hour to get just right only to come out sounding like it was written in the seventeenth century...Can you recommend the program you are using?

Yeah, I'm using Natural Reader. The only downside is their more natural ssounding voices cost to use. But you can find your own or use the system default. Easy to use. I think the web version lets you have 5k words a day too.

Adrian, I couldn't agree with you more. I think some readers get a little apathetic to it all in that they don't want to wade through the crap in order to get to the odd little gem that's out there.

You're right again. In fact, I've discovered some fine authors through the privilege of having a sample.

I love having more books to choose from and think opening the publishing world to new writers and new ideas has been a tremendous boon to avid readers everywhere. Yep, you have to take the good with the bad but when you find the good it's very good indeed.

I'll second that, Wendy. Finding a new author is like a drug. The buzz is unbeatable!

Great comments and suggestions guys (and gals), I appreciate the feedback and the tips on tools out there for use.

Ok, an old man rant by me (if 47 is old I guess) – Bah humbug ;). This is pointed more at the print side of the business not necessarily at the online self-publish side.

Being a reader only and not an author, my biggest (albeit self-serving) concern is going into a bookstore and not being sure that most of the new novels being published today are vetted as they once were not only for editing but for the quality of story. I am starting to get concerned that publishers would rather slap a cover on a semi-popular web based serial novel about a post-apocalyptic group of teen vampires living in a mineshaft that most likely would have seen a rejection slip in the old days than sift through the piles of submissions looking for really well-crafted work.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that authors who may not otherwise have been discovered now have the opportunity to show what they can do, and I appreciate the book business is a “business”, but the flip side is that for every truly quality piece of work are there now going to be 500 novels released that should have never seen the light of day?

It kind of reminds me of the music business. There used to be a time when record companies had a stranglehold on what was distributed so artists had few options on getting their art out unless you played by the corporate rules (almost always to the artists financial detriment), the good side to that was that while there was a lot of bubblegum garbage put out, due to the tight vetting pipeline most of the cream did manage to make its way to the top and was easy to find at the front of your local record store (love that vinyl).

However, today quality work is buried under an avalanche of self-produced auto-tune and YouTube hits. What's left of the large record companies care more about YouTube views when making publishing decisions than quality writing and musicianship.

I know it’s a double edge sword, but I am really starting to worry about the cream of the work being able to penetrate the sheer volume of average to below average work being produced.

I am an optimist by nature so please tell me I am completely wrong and that the next Lovecraft, King, Barker, Straub, Matheson, Bradbury, Asimov and Gibson’s of the world will be able to push through into our hands.

Fred, you make some good points. But I'll point out what a blessing having a website like GoodReads is to all us readers. Since I've joined here I have been able to find so many good books that never would have hit my reading radar before. I can learn about books and see reviews from average every day people like myself to help make good choices in books. In fact, I'm finding more books than I ever thought possible and almost feel overwhelmed with how much there is to read. This is not a bad thing. :-)
As with so many other things, the glut of bad books will die away as readers figure out the good from the bad and no money can be made from putting out substandard books.
The cream will always rise to the top. And avid readers will always share the good news about good books.

WendyB wrote: "Fred, you make some good points. But I'll point out what a blessing having a website like GoodReads is to all us readers. Since I've joined here I have been able to find so many good books that ne..."

Good point Wendy and thank you for the reply. I agree, my joining Goodreads was in part to look to other readers such as yourself to recommend something I would REALLY enjoy. Unfortunately due to my schedule I generally read only a book a month so I like to be very careful with my selections. I guess I will need to spend more time here talking with you good folks prior to making my reading choices.

I guess part of my concern was in going to a Barnes and Noble the other day and really having a hard time finding a noteworthy horror novel on the shelves (they seem to have pulled most of the quality modern stuff minus King, Koontz and Simmons of course), while at the same time being bombarded at every turn by stacks and stacks of what I would politely term VERY average work.

I just want to point out that, as far as music goes, the industry has always glutted itself on what was popular. Take hair metal and grunge, for example. When hair metal got popular, suddenly anyone playing the style was getting signed. Sure, most of them only got one album and disappeared but there was still an oversaturation. Same thing happened with grunge.

I'm confident though that you could find the next whoever. It might take some digging right now but with the industry shifting like it is and being friendlier to self/indie publishers, there's no real other way to do it. Thankfully, you can comb the Amazon categories and make use of lists around here.

Also, side note, but I'd be surprised find another Gibson. The man wrote fiction that almost completely became reality. Cyberpunk became life. I am completely baffled as to how anyone could repeat that line short of going more into harder sci-fi territory.

Ashe wrote: "I just want to point out that, as far as music goes, the industry has always glutted itself on what was popular. Take hair metal and grunge, for example. When hair metal got popular, suddenly any..."

Thanks Ashe.

I agree there has always been an oversaturation in music and books based upon what is popular at the moment (as a product of the 80's I am as guilty as the next person in picking up an occasional Duran Duran album), but I will argue just a tad on the depth of the saturation we are seeing with the markets as open as they are today seems just so much deeper (again I think it's a great thing for artists). It just seems to me to much more difficult now to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Again you folks are correct in pointing out that the key to finding that wheat is by networking as we are here.

Fred, part of the problem of the brick and mortar stores is they are mostly going to stock what they think will sell the fastest, so you won't find the best selection there. Now that doesn't mean the stores aren't useful. I still shop there 'cause nothing beats being surrounded by the look and smell of thousands of books. yeah, I've got the book bug bad. :-) I go prepared with a list of books that I'd like to find but most of the time it's easier to go online and find specific books on B&N or Amazon.
I think you already know everyone here can recommend more books than any of us could read in a lifetime.

Brick stores just gotta carry what's gonna sell. It sucks but yeah, as we all keep harping on, the boon of the internet is how much choice you can have. I will say, I still hop into a brick store from time to time. Occasionally, they will have something I'd like and the bargain section is great for finding themed anthologies or info books (I need to make a trip to B&N to pick up a gun book in fact).

Man, I love the internet.

My wife HATES going to book stores with me, I can spend hours browsing (and it's not like I need any more books).

Someone asked recently what I would do if I won the lottery (like 25+ million - won't happen because I never play). But I think I would open a multi-story new and used bookstore with comfortable leather couches and chairs everywhere with coffee and a small menu, and invite folks to browse and sit and read for as long as they like. I wouldn't really care if I lost money each year, I just would love to hang out and read there. I guess I could go to the local library for that though ;) (but my place would be SOOO much better).

Man, if you had like a writing cafe where folks could hole up but get fountain drinks and anything else (smoothies, coffee, etc.), I would practically live there.

Ashe wrote: "Man, if you had like a writing cafe where folks could hole up but get fountain drinks and anything else (smoothies, coffee, etc.), I would practically live there."

Not a bad idea Ashe, I will add it to my list.

An area or room specifically for working authors with any tools they may need (including coffee and red bull of course).

Fred, I do the lottery, and if by any chance those golden numbers come up, I'll be on the next plane...

I am always looking for cozy places with free refills to go and write. Honestly, I could come up with a helluva design for a writing cafe. Soda and water and hot chocolate in winter with writing rooms and adjustable lighting. The only thing that would suck for me is the lack of giant-friendly seating in the wild.

Haha, nice John, thanks.

Ashe, we'll come up with something, if...

Very thoughtful post Adrian, thank you. I agree with you (and others have recommended it as well), the key for me will be to be a little more discriminating when making my selections by simply reading a few pages from a copy at the bookstore or online (something I have never really done). I also am glad to have found a place (this group) to get some fantastic insight on quality reads. I am certainly not above reading an occasional zombie/post-apocalyptic novel of the week, but since I don’t read at the rate of many folks here (about a book a month), I really like to make most of them count.

Adrian is right, you should be able to see where a book is going within the third or fourth chapters - especially if the style is good. Many believe in Story! Story! Story! but I beg to differ. If it's not told well, a decent story can lose its flavour. Style means a lot to me.

Amazon's Look Inside is my favorite thing. It's saved me money on a lot of books I would have regretted buying, and I've come away with some gems I might not have taken a chance on if I hadn't been able to peek inside. Since I have an easy way to evaluate a book in just a few minutes, I have no problems with the number of indie books coming out: more books = a greater chance I'm going to find ones I'd love to read.

Z., my sentiments exactly!

Yeah, a lot of the books I pass on, I pass on them in the first few paragraphs, and it's always because of the clunky writing rather than a failure to "hook" me. If the writing's engaging, I'll give it a few pages to see I also get hooked into the story.

Amazon's Look Inside is a great feature but Goodreads lets authors post excerpts from their books which is an even better way to get a feel for the author's writing as well as the tone of the book. You can read an entire chapter instead of the random sample pages you sometimes get on Amazon.