4 ms·

A part of me welcomes this. I am sick of the noise. Browsing the Amazon (Kindle) bookstore, I wish that 90% of the junk didn't even appear in my search results.

by nsomaru 12y ago

A part of me welcomes this. I am sick of the noise. Browsing the Amazon (Kindle) bookstore, I wish that 90% of the junk didn't even appear in my search results. Rather read works by people who are creating for the sake of art, and not money. This does not mean that I believe authors should not be correctly compensated, but has more to do with the impetus for action itself and the resulting quality of work that is produced.

Perdition 12y ago
>A part of me welcomes this. I am sick of the noise. Browsing the Amazon (Kindle) bookstore, I wish that 90% of the junk didn't even appear in my search results. >Rather read works by people who are creating for the sake of art, and not money. What does that have to do with the low quality of many self-published works? There is tons of fiction out there written entirely for 'art' and it is nearly all complete trash. There is so much trash on Amazon because they are killing publishers who traditionally filtered out most of the trash. For every crappy bestseller they published the publishers weeded out tens of thousands of other crappy works. Crappy authors will still write, even if only for public praise (some people do like rubbish).
- vixen99 12y ago
  I can't see this as a problem. Let the market decide. Probably my treasured reading is your rubbish and just possibly, vice versa.
  - Perdition 12y ago
    The problem is that nobody has come up with a good way to filter through the self-published dross to find the gold. Without the publishers filtering you can't just pick a book at random and be ensured it probably won't make you want to claw your eyes out (at least publishers would clean up the major spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and incoherent plots). So what is left is popularity, and as already established that doesn't stop shitty authors writing books. Peer recommendations are a real crap-shoot unless you have vetted your peers thoroughly, which takes time. Whoever can build out an automated system to rank and recommend self-published books will make a fortune.
    - nikbackm 12y ago
      Wouldn't a system like Goodreads be a good start for that?
      - Perdition 12y ago
        I don't see how it is better than Amazon reviews. Reader reviews are okay for the best sellers if you read a lot of reviews (but I find it tends to heavily skew towards those who loved the book, with a handful of haters), but I find it is pretty much worthless when it comes to average books which only have a handful of reviews. I'm thinking of a more objective system. It could be based on reader reviews but would need to do something like making the review rank the book on a a set of criteria and then figuring out if the reviewer is trustworthy by cross comparison. eHarmony for books.
      - HelloMcFly 12y ago
        As a regular Goodreads user, I've found that it definitely hasn't been a good start thus far.
        wutbrodo 12y ago
        Wow really? My reaction to new social networks (even niche ones) is usually somewhere between apathy and irritation, but back in 2010 I remember being excited about Goodreads because I saw actual value there: it just make the system of book recommendations that I already rely on that much more efficient. It took until 2012 for it to suddenly gain popularity and for me to gain a critical mass of friends whose taste I trust on the service, but I get heaps of value out of it now.
        HelloMcFly 12y ago
        Two thoughts on that: 1) You are using it in a way that I'm not able to. For you it is a tool that leverages pre-existing relationships, which I'm sure is great. I know about four people that use Goodreads, and their tastes just don't align to me. And unfortunately for me, the stand-alone recommendation service Goodreads offers that people like me try to rely on is just terrible. 2) Even if I had a critical mass of friends making recommendations, they themselves identified the books they should read somewhere. Yes, we can all socially recommend books we like for awhile, but eventually someone has to start separating the wheat from the chaff to start making those recommendations. Books are not movies or songs, and it's much more time-consuming to do this en masse. I don't trust Goodreads to facilitate upstream discovery (that can leveraged downstream via social recommendations) in a publisher-less world primarily populated by self-published books.
davidw 12y ago
> Rather read works by people who are creating for the sake of art, and not money. So basically the independently wealthy.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  Lots of people from all classes of life out there writing fanfic.
- cstross 12y ago
  Point of information: back before I got the opportunity to write novels for a living, it took me 3-4 years to write one on a part-time/hobbyist/learning-the-art basis. That's because I had a day job, which came first. As someone who is earning a living by writing, I typically produce a book a year, plus change (sometimes up to two books per year). If downward pressure on production costs results in me having to seek work elsewhere, then of course I won't stop writing ... but I'll write a lot less. Amazon's strategy of driving down prices by leaning on publishers to cap prices across the board works on the assumption that all books are created equal. It's commodification, equating work of serious artistic or literary merit, or work that lots of people like, with work that is neither artistic, meritorious, or even popular. If the monopsonist gets their way, then all authors take a haircut. Even if you're a market fundamentalist, this has problems: Amazon may be sending a price signal, but it doesn't apply to the individual SKU but instead to the manufacturers' entire product range across the board. Any useful information is thus lost in the noise ...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - EliRivers 12y ago
      To quote cstross himself, "No, it's not a fucking lifestyle — it's a job." http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/cmap-8-lifestyle-or-job.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/cmap-8-l...
  - seanflyon 12y ago
Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
And I'm sure the 90% that vanishes will be the 90% you want gone. What I'm curious about is why you think Amazon's actions will drive away those creating crap for the sake of money. When I look through the Kindle Store the thing that always strikes me is how many knocked together short books written by people with no great expertise there are. To me that's the main current impact of Amazon's democratization of publishing. There's a very good question to be asked about why the current publishing elite should be the gate keepers to who gets published and who doesn't, however you don't have to browse much of Amazon to see the impact on quality when there is no gate keeper at all and, to me at least, it doesn't look like a utopia of art for art's sake.
- nsomaru 12y ago
  the downward pressure on prices will dissuade people who are writing with remuneration as a primary driving source of output. that said, that doesn't solve the problem of discovery, although it does alleviate it a bit. that's the logic, feel free to educate me :)
  - Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
    Love of writing doesn't make the time needed to write a novel and it doesn't feed families. Surely the quality of the output rather than the purity of the intent should be the driving metric? Weary journalists knocking out a book to order are realisticall better than 95% of enthusiastic amateurs. Besides, most writers are notoriously penny less. Why do you think anyone is going into it for the money?

by nsomaru 12y ago

Perdition 12y ago

>A part of me welcomes this. I am sick of the noise. Browsing the Amazon (Kindle) bookstore, I wish that 90% of the junk didn't even appear in my search results. >Rather read works by people who are creating for the sake of art, and not money. What does that have to do with the low quality of many self-published works? There is tons of fiction out there written entirely for 'art' and it is nearly all complete trash. There is so much trash on Amazon because they are killing publishers who traditionally filtered out most of the trash. For every crappy bestseller they published the publishers weeded out tens of thousands of other crappy works. Crappy authors will still write, even if only for public praise (some people do like rubbish).

vixen99 12y ago
I can't see this as a problem. Let the market decide. Probably my treasured reading is your rubbish and just possibly, vice versa.
- Perdition 12y ago
  The problem is that nobody has come up with a good way to filter through the self-published dross to find the gold. Without the publishers filtering you can't just pick a book at random and be ensured it probably won't make you want to claw your eyes out (at least publishers would clean up the major spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and incoherent plots). So what is left is popularity, and as already established that doesn't stop shitty authors writing books. Peer recommendations are a real crap-shoot unless you have vetted your peers thoroughly, which takes time. Whoever can build out an automated system to rank and recommend self-published books will make a fortune.
  - nikbackm 12y ago
    Wouldn't a system like Goodreads be a good start for that?
    - Perdition 12y ago
      I don't see how it is better than Amazon reviews. Reader reviews are okay for the best sellers if you read a lot of reviews (but I find it tends to heavily skew towards those who loved the book, with a handful of haters), but I find it is pretty much worthless when it comes to average books which only have a handful of reviews. I'm thinking of a more objective system. It could be based on reader reviews but would need to do something like making the review rank the book on a a set of criteria and then figuring out if the reviewer is trustworthy by cross comparison. eHarmony for books.
    - HelloMcFly 12y ago
      As a regular Goodreads user, I've found that it definitely hasn't been a good start thus far.
      - wutbrodo 12y ago
        Wow really? My reaction to new social networks (even niche ones) is usually somewhere between apathy and irritation, but back in 2010 I remember being excited about Goodreads because I saw actual value there: it just make the system of book recommendations that I already rely on that much more efficient. It took until 2012 for it to suddenly gain popularity and for me to gain a critical mass of friends whose taste I trust on the service, but I get heaps of value out of it now.
        HelloMcFly 12y ago
        Two thoughts on that: 1) You are using it in a way that I'm not able to. For you it is a tool that leverages pre-existing relationships, which I'm sure is great. I know about four people that use Goodreads, and their tastes just don't align to me. And unfortunately for me, the stand-alone recommendation service Goodreads offers that people like me try to rely on is just terrible. 2) Even if I had a critical mass of friends making recommendations, they themselves identified the books they should read somewhere. Yes, we can all socially recommend books we like for awhile, but eventually someone has to start separating the wheat from the chaff to start making those recommendations. Books are not movies or songs, and it's much more time-consuming to do this en masse. I don't trust Goodreads to facilitate upstream discovery (that can leveraged downstream via social recommendations) in a publisher-less world primarily populated by self-published books.

davidw 12y ago

> Rather read works by people who are creating for the sake of art, and not money. So basically the independently wealthy.

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
Lots of people from all classes of life out there writing fanfic.
cstross 12y ago
Point of information: back before I got the opportunity to write novels for a living, it took me 3-4 years to write one on a part-time/hobbyist/learning-the-art basis. That's because I had a day job, which came first. As someone who is earning a living by writing, I typically produce a book a year, plus change (sometimes up to two books per year). If downward pressure on production costs results in me having to seek work elsewhere, then of course I won't stop writing ... but I'll write a lot less. Amazon's strategy of driving down prices by leaning on publishers to cap prices across the board works on the assumption that all books are created equal. It's commodification, equating work of serious artistic or literary merit, or work that lots of people like, with work that is neither artistic, meritorious, or even popular. If the monopsonist gets their way, then all authors take a haircut. Even if you're a market fundamentalist, this has problems: Amazon may be sending a price signal, but it doesn't apply to the individual SKU but instead to the manufacturers' entire product range across the board. Any useful information is thus lost in the noise ...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - EliRivers 12y ago
    To quote cstross himself, "No, it's not a fucking lifestyle — it's a job." http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/cmap-8-lifestyle-or-job.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/cmap-8-l...
- seanflyon 12y ago

Tyrannosaurs 12y ago

And I'm sure the 90% that vanishes will be the 90% you want gone. What I'm curious about is why you think Amazon's actions will drive away those creating crap for the sake of money. When I look through the Kindle Store the thing that always strikes me is how many knocked together short books written by people with no great expertise there are. To me that's the main current impact of Amazon's democratization of publishing. There's a very good question to be asked about why the current publishing elite should be the gate keepers to who gets published and who doesn't, however you don't have to browse much of Amazon to see the impact on quality when there is no gate keeper at all and, to me at least, it doesn't look like a utopia of art for art's sake.

nsomaru 12y ago
the downward pressure on prices will dissuade people who are writing with remuneration as a primary driving source of output. that said, that doesn't solve the problem of discovery, although it does alleviate it a bit. that's the logic, feel free to educate me :)
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  Love of writing doesn't make the time needed to write a novel and it doesn't feed families. Surely the quality of the output rather than the purity of the intent should be the driving metric? Weary journalists knocking out a book to order are realisticall better than 95% of enthusiastic amateurs. Besides, most writers are notoriously penny less. Why do you think anyone is going into it for the money?