What's your opinion of self-published books?

[Mr. Poopypants]

It seems they are often viewed unfavorably and even with some disdain. They're not taken very seriously and have the burden of proving to the reading public their intellectual, artistic, cultural, and literary worth because they were not published traditionally. Though I have not read many self-published books, I tend to share the view that many of them are self published for a reason: they suck. And I suppose this is unfortunate because there are some great writings among the heap of rubbish, but publishers are constantly inundated with submissions that they can't possibly go over all of them and therefore a number of good ones get overlooked. I can understand why some people would then go through the self-publishing route. Still it seems the stigma of self-publishing will be attached to even good writers who choose to pay to publish.

Now that e-books are gaining popularity and self-publishing is being offered by Amazon and many other places online, I wonder if self-published books are going to be accepted alongside traditionally published books and thus be taken seriously and given respect. A number of them are published as e-books. I've read somewhere in an article that the traditional path to getting a book published will soon disappear and traditional publishers will become less significant.

I think with the new ways that the Internet is being used (in addition to the self-delusion that people have of their mediocre talent), everyone thinks he or she is a writer and can get something out for public reading. I'm not sure if I'm ready to accept self-published books to flood book stores, libraries, schools, etc.

On an anecdotal note, I read a self-published book by a fellow coworker. I remember he announced it at a meeting a few years ago, but I only read it a year or so later. It was terrible, to say the least. It was very poorly written with many errors, and I pity the person whom he thanked for editing his book. I only finished it out of a moral obligation. He has since written a number of other books that he self-published. I've not read them, so my opinion of his first book should not apply to them. He seems to have a writer's delusion of self-importance. 

[MadJohnShaft]

You can no longer trust the reviews on Amazon that's for sure. I look at the 2 star ones now, the rest are all planted.   The Kindle Singles market is a little different than the self-published market. The Singles are a whole new thing and I have found the factual ones based on topics to be interesting.



Wool was self-published and that's great. There sure are plenty of non-self published books that totally blow.  I didn't do National Novel Writing Month but that's another place where books are born.


Hey look an article appears

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/nov/19/self-published-books-where-to-find

[Mr. Poopypants]

I've long suspected that some of the reviews on Amazon were planted, and if by planted you mean submitted by the author, the publisher, familiy members and friends, or all of them. Good to know that other people think this too--but then I guess one would have to be totally naive to believe that all the reviews are honest and legit.

Yeah, there definitely are some good self-published works out there. But the the publishing industry is one based on traditions, and established authors and their readers are in some ways very elitist. It will be some time before self-published authors will be seen as equals by their published peers.

[giantchris]

I think that with the sheer amount of work invested in writing a novel you won't ever see THAT much of a flood of self published books.  I outlined a sci-fi novel and wrote like 25 pages and stopped writing because it takes a ton of time to do.