|
The problem is not self-published books; it's self-published authors.
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 15:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 05:22 |
|
|
fritz posted:In actual thread content, I read and enjoyed 'Redemption's Blade' by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and then read but did not particularly enjoy the sequel by Justina Robson. I hesitate to mention it here because it's manga and I haven't read much of it, but Frieren: Beyond Journey's End follows the long lived elf of the classic adventuring party. It starts after they defeated the Demon King and saved the kingdom. While celebrating and parting, they see a meteor shower that comes around only once every 50 years. The elf has them promise to meet again the next time and she'll show them a place to get a better view. Their 10 years together and the fifty years until the next shower are fleeting moments to her, a long time for the already mature dwarf, and a lifetime for the humans, and the manga seems to be about her coming to terms with that and their legacies. It won a few awards and Viz is releasing an official english translation starting later this year.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 16:06
|
|
|
thotsky posted:The problem is not self-published books; it's self-published authors. I gotta admit that, despite being a self-published author, I've rarely read a self published book I could get more than a quarter through without rolling my eyes and putting the book down. Recent attempts include ones that were very highly rated, such as The Sword of Kaigen (winner of SPFBO) and Kings of Paradise. In both cases it wasn't so much the writing as specific aspects of the world and descriptors that make me close the book in disgust. As examples: In Sword of Kaigen we're presented with a seemingly feudal Japanese world where the swordmen of a certain tribe have ice powers. They're able to generate spears of ice. A pretty powerful technique, if this was set during actual fedual era. But instead we're expected to believe this group of warriors exists in a contemporary world, complete with video games and modern industry. Yet these ice spear wielding warriors are the unconquerable warriors of their civilization. What the heck are some ice spears going to do against bomber jets and aircraft carriers? Also the insistence on slipping japanese words and honorifics into the text constantly pissed me off, like I was reading a bad fan translation of manga. Kings of Paradise I got about 10 pages into. We're presented with a kid with birth defects who supposed to be a super genius. To the point that his brain developed so early that he can remember being in the womb. He describes this as warm and red. Red? There's no light in the womb, it's inside a human body. It's gonna be dark, and not enough light penetrates the skin and into the uterus for subsurface scattering of light to make the womb seem "red", even if there was a kid in there that had the ability to open his eyes. Maybe these are petty complaints but both screamed "amateur" to me and I went back to reading KJ Parker. Ccs fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Aug 9, 2021 |
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 16:25
|
|
|
Ccs posted:
https://www.businessinsider.com/fetus-vision-hearing-development-uterus-2016-9 light makes it inside the womb by the way.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 16:29
|
|
|
To whom it may concern, please find attached my #ownvoices story about being a baby
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 17:03
|
|
|
Sibling of TB posted:https://www.businessinsider.com/fetus-vision-hearing-development-uterus-2016-9 light makes it inside the womb by the way. Huh, learn something new every day. Apologies to Richard Nell, he did his research I guess haha. Although that says something about the biases people have toward self published work. If I had read that in a book published by Tor or whoever, I probably would've gone "okay I guess that scans" but since I read it in a self-published book I went "this is nonsense!" and closed the book. Whoops! Ccs fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Aug 9, 2021 |
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 18:12
|
|
|
It sounds like you've already made up your mind not to like a self-published book before you read it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 18:17
|
|
|
packetmantis posted:It sounds like you've already made up your mind not to like a self-published book before you read it. About 30% of all books I buy sit unfinished on my kindle for various reasons. Magic for Liars, An Unkindness of Magicians and Foundryside are a few example of professionally published books I put aside after a few chapters, meanwhile There is no Antimemetics Division was self published and I blazed through it in a day. I also read Rage of Dragons which was originally self published and enjoyed it, though not enough to read the sequel. Senelin Ascends is a well written book that was also originally self published but I got bored with the plight of the characters so I stopped reading it, but not for any glaring errors, the protagonist just wasn't grabbing me.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 18:55
|
|
|
I sometimes enjoy reading self-published books because they're often unfiltered outsider art, so there's a certain charm to them. I've been reading along with the 376 Page podcast, and the I've always had fun reading the self-published "bad" books in some way, which has been far from true for the ones they've covered that made it through a publisher.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 19:27
|
|
|
A lot of the self-published stuff Ccs mentioned above has the opposite problem imo: rather than being unfiltered they're often too imitative of their traditionally published equivalents
Llamadeus fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Aug 9, 2021 |
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 19:52
|
|
|
I'll go ahead and plug a recent weird, but pretty drat good (IMO), self-pubbed book I read in the past year or so. The only thing that I didn't like about it was that it's only available as a PDF. (Yes, I know it's possible to change the format but I'm lazy.) Body After Body store page posted:In this long novella inspired by the Mountain Goats & John Vanderslice concept EP Moon Colony Bloodbath, three indentured, memory-wiped laborers at a crumbling storage facility make some unexpected discoveries about the genetically engineered mutant bodies they tend each day. Sex, drugs, violence, cannibalism, psychic powers, a catgirl (sort of)…Body After Body is the lurid, dreamlike, amoral queer/trans sci-fi trash literature at least four or five people have been waiting for. I have still not listened to the EP it's inspired by so YMMV if that makes it better or not? Works perfectly well as its own thing without any knowledge of the EP, regardless. Here it is on Gumroad: https://flameswallower.gumroad.com/l/iCucG
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 20:16
|
|
|
The most interesting experience I've had with a self published book was Wild Animus from a writer named Rich Shapero. Mr. Shapero is the Tommy Wiseau of self publishing. On the way to my college dining hall 10+ years ago there were a stack of boxes containing his book. But the book wasn't all that was in these boxes. There were CDs, post cards with paintings, and an autographed letter. Mr Shapero goes around to campuses, music festivals, and political demonstrations and hands out these boxes. He describes his book as a multimedia experience. A friend of mine tried to actually read the book along with the accompanying music that is supposed to put you in the right headspace to fully experience the story. It's, uh.... well the book is basically Grizzly Man but if the guy who had gotten eaten by bears first dressed as a ram and was instead eaten by wolves. As far as I can tell, the author is a venture capitalist who did too many drugs and believed he had an experience he could only express through this book. Instead of going full Neil Breen and making a film, which would've been much easier to distribute, he choose a costly physical distribution model involving traveling around the entire US multiple times to bequeath his work free of charge. Reading Wild Animus actually broke my friend as far as books go. He used to be a fan of fantasy novels but he hasn't read a single book since.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 20:43
|
|
|
DurianGray posted:I'll go ahead and plug a recent weird, but pretty drat good (IMO), self-pubbed book I read in the past year or so. The only thing that I didn't like about it was that it's only available as a PDF. (Yes, I know it's possible to change the format but I'm lazy.) Yo, your last rec from Gumroad was really good, I'm gonna check this out. Thanks!
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 20:47
|
|
|
Read Shards of Earth based off the recommendations a few pages ago over the weekend. A lot of fun, scratched that space opera itch. I bounced off of Children of Time really hard despite all the hype around it so I was a bit sceptical but Shards of Earth was a good time. Definitely one of the better books I've read this year.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 20:49
|
|
|
DurianGray posted:I'll go ahead and plug a recent weird, but pretty drat good (IMO), self-pubbed book I read in the past year or so. The only thing that I didn't like about it was that it's only available as a PDF. (Yes, I know it's possible to change the format but I'm lazy.) Major Cats (2019) vibe from that artwork. I love it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 20:51
|
|
|
Ccs posted:It's, uh.... well the book is basically Grizzly Man but if the guy who had gotten eaten by bears first dressed as a ram and was instead eaten by wolves. The IDEOTV people did an episode on this one a while back : https://www.idontevenownatelevision.com/2015/04/22/029-wild-animus-w-tim-faust/
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 21:03
|
|
|
fritz posted:The IDEOTV people did an episode on this one a while back : https://www.idontevenownatelevision.com/2015/04/22/029-wild-animus-w-tim-faust/ I knew that sounded familiar for some reason!
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 21:10
|
|
|
Oh, and Mod Hat On for a second: Gentle reminder: please don't yell at each other because someone wants to read a book you don't, or vice versa. Extended discussion of litrpg and self-published stuff does go in a different thread, though, not because a self published book is *always* bad, but because such generally appeals to a different (someone less critical) audience.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 23:14
|
|
|
I think it's increasingly going to be a mistake to write off self-published stuff entirely (and i have no skin in the game either way) since the nature of the world means that there are increasingly good reasons to not want to go trad pubbed. Does it mean that there's not even the basic filter of an acquisitions editor (which lbr means incredibly little) to artificially create at least some sort of low bar? Sure. Read the previews. Take advantage of refunds. No one's time is so valuable that a half-hour spent realizing they don't like a book is a huge imposition. e: sorry heironymous, i hadnt loaded your reply yet when i wrote this.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 23:17
|
|
|
You can imagine a world where the quality distribution of self-pub titles and professional submissions is exactly the same, but self pub still looks worse simply because the bottom 80% of the trad pub subs get rejected whereas in self pub it’s all hanging out. I’m sure top end self pub can throw down with anything traditionally published; you just gotta remember that with self pub you’re basically reading the quality stuff AND the slush pile.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 23:26
|
|
|
Interrupting question: what's the best place to start reading Tanith Lee? My completionist brain is trying to stop me from reading Heart-Beast, demanding I start in a "better" location and while I'll wrestle it into submission I might as well ask for recs!
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 23:29
|
|
|
I was resolutely against trying anything on KU for years, until a friend convinced me to read a specific series (Cradle). It's not high literature or anything but I absolutely had more fun reading that than many traditionally published genre books I've read over the years. I think if you're going to bring something up from that stuff ITT it needs to be something you're pretty comfortable defending as being in that top % that rivals published work. IMO. Like I've read/tried quite a few now and it's a very small list that I'd ever bring up here at all.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2021 23:36
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:Interrupting question: what's the best place to start reading Tanith Lee? My completionist brain is trying to stop me from reading Heart-Beast, demanding I start in a "better" location and while I'll wrestle it into submission I might as well ask for recs! As the Person Who Frequently Recommends Tanith Lee: wherever you want. She was incredibly prolific and wrote both one-offs and series books, so I don't think there's any one "best" place to start with her. There's still a ton of her stuff I haven't read, but of what I have, my favorites are: The Silver Metal Lover (but ignore the sequel, Metallic Love, which is bad and unnecessary). The "Tales from the Flat Earth" series (Night's Master et al) -- great if you like the mystical, fairy-tale-ish feel. Speaking of fairy tales, Red As Blood is a book of reversed fairy tales, where the heroes of the originals are recast as villains, and vice versa. Cyrion is more traditional swords and sorcery, especially suitable if you like clever heroes outwitting their enemies. The Piratica series is more YA-ish but still first-class swashbuckling pirate adventure.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 00:00
|
|
|
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NRQOR26/
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 00:10
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:you just gotta remember that with self pub you’re basically reading the quality stuff AND the slush pile. This realization that I was actually paying money to read a slush pile is ultimately why I quit reading self-published books that don't come with a recommendation from the forums or a friend.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 00:15
|
|
|
Ccs posted:I gotta admit that, despite being a self-published author, I've rarely read a self published book I could get more than a quarter through without rolling my eyes and putting the book down. I have to admit to being in the same boat, and it makes me feel like a huge hypocrite
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 01:34
|
|
|
Aardvark! posted:I was resolutely against trying anything on KU for years, until a friend convinced me to read a specific series (Cradle). It's not high literature or anything but I absolutely had more fun reading that than many traditionally published genre books I've read over the years. I think if you're going to bring something up from that stuff ITT it needs to be something you're pretty comfortable defending as being in that top % that rivals published work. IMO. Like I've read/tried quite a few now and it's a very small list that I'd ever bring up here at all. Khizan posted:This realization that I was actually paying money to read a slush pile is ultimately why I quit reading self-published books that don't come with a recommendation from the forums or a friend. Always, ALWAYS look up the reviews on a random book you're thinking of reading. Amazon and goodreads reviews are overall not good, but they often contain important warnings or trends that can signal if a book is hot garbage or not. In this day and age it's not worth it to read something blind. There's just too many books that you can easily get your hands on and not enough time to try them all. And like, this sucks for anyone trying to get their stuff sold on the market, but as a reader you should try to value your time. Read excerpts, ask if anyone in here has read it, go with your gut if it says a book will be bad. /gets off soapbox Selachian, thanks for the recs! I just finished rereading Lilith Saintcrow's first published work, Dark Watcher, and it's fascinating how it's a near-perfect prototype of what her urban fantasy/paranormal fantasy stuff will become: lush writing, dark broody super protective man with willful, magical woman. The worldbuilding will be interesting and not given as much focus as I'd like given how tantalizing the hints are, and there will be action. Dark Watcher is really rough edged, with not enough time for anything to be developed and the characters are kind of flimsy, but it was less than 200 pages and I enjoyed it. It's also been nice to actually finish reading something, even if it was a reread, as I've been stuck in a rut of reading something, getting interested in it, and promptly starting something else and being unable to resume it. I've been doing a lot of stress reading but it took this silly indulgent urban fantasy romance to get me through a single book. Go go ADHD! Fingers crossed my new ADHD meds will let me finish more books in the future.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 01:36
|
|
|
Recently finished - Fugitive Telemetry (Martha Wells) - not the best in the series, but the adventures of Detective Murderbot is something I can get behind. Catfishing on CatNet (Naomi Kritzer) - fun YA about a cat-picture obsessed AI loose on the internet, and some of its favorite people. Worth reading. Cry Pilot (Joel Dane) ‐ fairly by-the-numbers milsf boot camp story with an intriguing setting. If you liked Rich Man's War etc. you will probably like this.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 01:47
|
|
|
the thing about self-published works, especially on amazon, is that it is just absurdly market and algorithm-driven and the self-publishing market is the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to sf/f stuff. like, how many releases on amazon are some variant of Generic Title: A Harem GameLit Shifter Romance Cultivation Adventure? and the whole 30 books to 50k or whatever model means that the overwhelming drive is to just throw out as many books as possible. i spent a few months churning through self-published stuff on Amazon and didn't even find a single one that made me go, oh yeah, this is kind of interesting. that's a worse hit rate than web serials!
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 02:49
|
|
|
pradmer posted:The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi - $2.99 This is a must read if you want to get depressed about climate stuff.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 02:58
|
|
|
We’re all depressed about climate stuff today 
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 02:59
|
|
|
For self pub stuff, it helps to find a few authors you like, and then use the "people who read this also read" links on Amazon to find other authors that are pretty good. It's not a perfect setup by any means but it has netted me some good reads over the years and a few new authors I follow.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 03:42
|
|
|
Horizon Burning posted:and the whole 30 books to 50k or whatever model means that the overwhelming drive is to just throw out as many books as possible. In my experience this is mostly limited to romance authors.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 03:53
|
|
|
Speaking of self-published books, my Kindle has been displaying increasingly weirder book ads on the cover when it's turned off. Latest gem is this thing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0915PKZ21/ Synopsis for The System posted:In the thirty-second century, humanity is star-faring. Still, humankind has yet to discover another Earth-like planet or another sentient species.The Kookaburra, a human survey ship, is on a mission to investigate stars at the edge of known space. Suddenly the Kookaburra finds itself in a different part of the universe. Without any hope of returning to the Milky Way, the Kookaburra investigates two nearby stars. Once there, the cause of the human's predicament is revealed. The crew receive an ultimatum from an alien called 'The Visitor'. Some of those aboard must complete a 'task' for the Visitor. Only then will the Kookaburra be returned to the Milky Way.A team of four, the ground crew, two men and two women, set out to complete the task. Within hours they encounter a formidable alien technology, a gate, which allows rapid travel from one planet to another. After traversing the gate, the ground crew emerge on the surface of an Earth-like planet. This is one of the holy grails of space exploration and a new experience for three of them. Next, the ground crew meets a local, sentient humanoid, and their assumptions about so many things are upended.The surprises keep coming at a breakneck pace, threatening to overwhelm the ground crew. There is more than one Earth-like planet, more than one local sentient species. The locals are friendly and charming. The locals are disturbingly human-like but also alarmingly not. The ground crew soon find they can communicate with the locals.The ground crew quickly encounter a second formidable alien technology: kaihl. The kahlia are used ubiquitously by the locals and act as neural enhancers. When the ground crew are offered the chance to earn kaihl, they realise they have little choice. The ground crew gain kaihl but soon realise the kaihl provide abilities they were not warned about.Foremost among the kaihl's powers is an emotional awareness of what people nearby are feeling. The emotional awareness: leova, opens new possibilities for the ground crew, especially concerning sex. As the ground crew discover more about the locals, they realise that the kaihl may have other functions, some of which are alarming.Thekla, one of the ground crew, finds herself attracted to a local woman. The attraction is reciprocal, but is the attraction related to the 'task', or something else? When something unexpected happens, all of the ground crew must confront their sexuality; their attitudes to each other and the local inhabitants. As the ground crew wrestle with their newly-discovered emotional awareness, the relationship between them changes forever.The task is revealed, partially. The ground crew struggle to understand the 'task', constantly feeling that there is something hidden. When the 'task' is completed, the Kookaburra's crew and ground crew are relieved.The outcome of the task changes the lives of the locals profoundly, forever. The Kookaburra returns to the Milky Way, with rewards bestowed by the Visitor.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 04:04
|
|
|
freebooter posted:In my experience this is mostly limited to romance authors. no way. the jack reacher tough guy knock-off market is the same, and just about any given sf/f self-published person on amazon is going to have an urban fantasy world of darkness knock-off, a muddy European fantasy knock-off, and some kind of mil-scifi space opera firefly knock-off, and probably a LitRPG of some sort.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 04:44
|
|
|
fritz posted:In actual thread content, I read and enjoyed 'Redemption's Blade' by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and then read but did not particularly enjoy the sequel by Justina Robson. felt the same way, there's a third one out but i'm not game to touch it. anthony ryan wrote a somewhat similar set of novellas (two of seven are published so far) that i read about the same time, starting with a pilgimage of swords, they're ok.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 05:55
|
|
|
Hobnob posted:Recently finished - cry pilot has two sequels, each more derivative. Apparently Joel Dane is a pseudonym for a successful author in another genre but although i read all three i can't say i cared enough to do any detective work to find out.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 06:07
|
|
|
90s Cringe Rock posted:I don't know if there's a way to search the first thread, which is archived, but it's me. Im the graydon saunders march northposter58. I think I first heard about the series here like, five or six years ago, and then didn't actually read it until recently. General Battuta posted:You can imagine a world where the quality distribution of self-pub titles and professional submissions is exactly the same, but self pub still looks worse simply because the bottom 80% of the trad pub subs get rejected whereas in self pub it’s all hanging out. I’m sure top end self pub can throw down with anything traditionally published; you just gotta remember that with self pub you’re basically reading the quality stuff AND the slush pile. It's like Baen Books but crowdsourced!
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 07:00
|
|
|
If we are talking self-published SF, I would like to recommend goon-written Hard Luck Hank, which is the best kind of self-published fiction: A pile of crazy ideas thrown haphazardly together in ways that would never make it past an editor but is extremely entertaining to read.
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 07:07
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 05:22 |
|
|
Echoing the sentiment of more advertising, that's how I find the stuff I read, which can be both very good or very dumb or very both. I already have a folder full of epubs I need to put on my reader and a reader full of books and a Kindle account full of books (partially due to deals posted in this thread) and many many boxes full of books, with no time for any of them, but I need more books. So give me more!Ccs posted:I gotta admit that, despite being a self-published author, Finished your book a few days ago but didn't have time to mention it until now, it was great, please write the sequel. I left an Amazon review which almost I never do thanks to extreme laziness.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2021 07:44
|
|
