Once bitten... (Books)

[thistlechaser]

Since I'm doing a good job on reducing the size of my To Read pile, I was poking around on Amazon for some new books. The site recommended Wool, by Hugh Howey for me.

On the surface, this looked like a good match. Post-apocalyptic, a whole lot (2,000+) five star reviews.

But then I noticed it. The book is self published. With one single exception, I have not read a self-published book that was worth paying any amount of money for. The one exception was someone on my friends list (hi loupnoir), and I do have another in my To Read pile written by another person on my friends list (though I can't recall which LJ name goes with pen name -- hi AJ Rose!). But non-LJ friends self published stuff? Nothing but god-awful unreadable piles of crap.

And I mentioned all the good reviews of Wool? Contain lines like "One small note to other authors that might be reading this review, part of what makes Wool a joy to read is the lack of grammatical and spelling errors of so many of the self published books.". The fact that a self published book is doing the bare minimum that should be required of a book...

Sigh. It's only $5 and change, but I really don't want to get burned again. I'm sure there are good writers out there who are self publishing, but when so many of them are just so awful they should have their keyboards taken away...

Has anyone happened to have read Wool?

Edit: I wish Amazon would mark books as self published. Once I find a book I'm interested in, if I don't recognize the publisher's name, I always google to see if it's traditional or not.

Comments

[isandare.livejournal.com]

I have the Wool books! I rather liked them as a popcorn read. And I looked around and it looks like the first Wool book is available for Kindle as a freebie if you haven't checked it out already?

http://www.amazon.com/Wool-ebook/dp/B005FC52L0/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1352759067&sr=8-3&keywords=wool

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

You rock! TWO gold stars for you! :D Perfect, I can check it out and get the book (made of the five stories), if I like it.

Thanks!

[isandare.livejournal.com]

:D Let me know if you liked it or not! Also, in theory, one ought to be able to lend Kindle books to friends but I have't dug into it too deeply.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I'm almost done with my current book, so I'll likely check it out next.

I think the book lending only lasts for a short time (7 days?), and I'm such a slow reader (no time!), I haven't tried to borrow books from anyone. It'd be nice if you could easily make a list of all your ebooks so you could post them offering to lend them to folks though...

[isandare.livejournal.com]

Seven days? Boo. That's shorter than the real libraries! And yeah, that'd be pretty cool.

[loup_noir]

The whole self-publishing thing is full of ways to spoof respectability. So, if you publish via Amazon.com's Createspace, you have an option to purchase ISBNs and you can use that ISBN to publish under whatever publishing house name you make up. You can also buy your own ISBN(s) and publish as you wish. Heck, if you use CreateSpace, you don't have to credit them, as you make up your own interior gorp.

That said, I've read quite a few novels from reputable publishing houses that were crap, or might have been better than crap had someone bothered to spend a few hours editing them.

Thank you for the kind words. I so very much appreciate it!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

That said, I've read quite a few novels from reputable publishing houses that were crap, or might have been better than crap had someone bothered to spend a few hours editing them.

Truth. It's not a perfect way to judge if I should buy a book or not, unfortunately.