Recently, I accidently stumbled across a discussion group, or forum, on Amazon.com. How is happened: I was looking for a book on Amazon and noticed a link to a Science Fiction Discussion group, so I clicked on it and found hundreds of posts by readers and self-published science fiction authors.

I was excited at first because I thought I had found a group of self-published authors to discuss writing with, but soon my excitement left me. Most of them would beg the reader to go to their web site the look at their book, or buy it. It was embarrassing to read their posts, as they bragged about how good their books were. They would sometimes post a long synopsis of the whole book. Some of the titles of their books seemed insane, and the subjects they wrote about were just as bad. I got the impression (and I could be wrong) that they wrote their books without any writing training, and they had a friend or spouse copyedit their book, and then had their work printed into book form.

I’m at a loss here. Will someone please explain to me who these authors/writers are, and why they are on the Amazon discussion group pushing what appears to be terrible books. (I did not go to any of their sites or order any of their books, so I am only assuming their books are terrible.)I have never thought of self-publishing as being a bad thing, but these types of authors could (or have) give self-publishing a bad reputation.

Azel

I think the thing about self-publishing is that it's not a bad thing, or a good thing. That a book's been self-published tells you nothing about whether it's good or bad, only that the author had a few thousand pounds to spare, and now, in the days of LuLu, you don't even need that.

Whatever we may think of the publishing industry or particular books it publishes, there's some quality control that goes on before the book hits the bookshop shelves. Quite a lot of experienced people have to decide that it's good enough, and of the right kind, to sell several thousand copies - i.e. some complete strangers can be persuaded to buy it. As you say, it sounds as if these authors are discovering that it's very, very difficult to persuade complete strangers to buy your novel.

With self-publishing only the author needs to decide that it will sell, and in some ways authors are the worst possible people to judge their own work. And there's no compulsion to do even the most basic publishing work on it - always supposing the author knows there are such jobs as copy-editing, blurb-writing, marketing, publicity and so on. Particularly those who've never been near a writing group or class or book, or anything which offers some reasonably objective way of judging and improving work.

I don't know how such Amazon groups work, but I don't suppose they have to audition their books to get on it.

Emma

<Added>

"Whatever we may think of the publishing industry or particular books it publishes, there's some quality control that goes on before the book hits the bookshop shelves."

Which isn't to say that if a book can't find a publisher it's no good. Of course there are lots of reasons for a publisher to turn down a book which are nothing to do with whether it's any good or not. And there are excellent reasons for self-publishing. But as you've discovered, Azel, there are also some bad ones...