In my recent book review, The Saturday Morning Post (No. 51)The Saturday Morning Post (No. 51), I said; "People complain about the quality of author/published books, but when I read SF like this, and see the ratings, I have to say that it's not the books, but the readers." I was referring to the book I had reviewed regarding its literary quality, or lack there off. I think that perhaps I need to expand on that a bit.
Need is probably an overstatement. What I really need to do is to come up with something to write about every week to fill this slot. And talking about the quality of that book and the books I read in my youth, will, I hope, fill this slot for this week. So here we go.
Just to recap - in my review of Junkyard by Lindsay Buroker, I complained that the story was so contrived and hackneyed that it would best serve as a Captain Underpants story rather than a story for adults. Despite this fact, it had 1755 ratings with a 4.2 star average. Clearly, most of its reader found it quite enjoyable. My point was that it seems that ebook readers are not very demanding when it comes to what they read, if they could rate this rather silly book so highly. At least in my opinion.
I was thinking about this book in relationship to the common impression that self-published books and authors are less polished and accomplished compared to traditionally published books and authors. The point I was making was that books like that, and indeed a great many, but far from all books, are aimed at a readership that actually wants this type of story. The book was actually written for a certain market - the market that a hundred years ago was served by the pulp magazines. Their quality was criticized as well from literary circles, but the simple fact of the matter is, people want to read these types of books.
In my piece, I added, that I had read hundreds of books that were likely no better than Junkyard in my youth and enjoyed them, so I could hardly cast stones at either the book or these readers for settling for what I think now is a very low bar for entertainment. I know this is to be true, because over the years I have tried to reread the books I enjoyed in my teens and early twenties, and found them unreadable. The writing is too basic, too sparse, the characters too thin, the stories too simple for my taste today. Junkyard is not any worse than those books, perhaps a little better than some. But having said that, I will say that all in all, neither those old SF books from the 20's, 30's, 40's 50's and 60's nor the Buroker book are objectively very good. They're just good enough. Good enough for their target audience - avid ebook readers of genre fiction.
The ebook market is the 21st century version of pulp stories, something I've said here from the beginning of this blog. Many, but not most, of the most successful books are written by the same type of authors who wrote those old books, which is to say, professional authors trying to make a living selling words at a few cents a word. They needed a deep well of imagination, a story formula, and the ability to type fast. Given the number of books Buroker has put out in the last decade, this is a talent - and a profession - she shares with all those old writers. And I said, there was, and still is, an audience for this type of fiction - pulp fiction. There are likely millions of avid readers who value story over any other quality of writing, and who have the imagination to fill in all the blanks left by this type of story. Nothing wrong with these readers The fact that as I've grown older, I've come to value other aspects of writing over story doesn't make me a superior reader, just a different type of reader. And even so, I in turn, certainly can be looked down in turn by more sophisticated readers than me. Thus, I, at least, don't put a value on the type of books one enjoys. Reading is reading.
However, the fact that there are a large number of avid readers who are entertained with these basic genre-action stories means that basic, fast-written and cheap genre stories are what they often get. Stories like Junkyard are written for that market. So when people on the outside look at the types and qualities of indie-published stories and bemoan the fact that they are basic, fast-written, and cheap genre stories, it is not the authors that should be held accountable for the books they write, but the readers who want, or at least accept them. As I said, it's the market. To succeed you give them what they want.
This is not to say that there are no indie-published books that rival or exceed the quality of any published books. There are no doubt many thousands. And well, the bar isn't all that high in traditional publishing either. Many of these more ambitious indie-published books are just as, if not more, popular than their more pulpy indie-published stablemates. And I do think indie-published books are getting more noticed these days. Indeed, a romancy novelist recently sold her indie-published series to a traditional publisher for over a million dollars. She said she would probably earn more money in the long run keeping it self-published, but wanted her books in stores and to be a visible author, something you don't usually get as an indie-author. I seems to me that the best quality indie-books, and indie-publishing in general are slowly being recognized as an ever more legitimate publishing route.
However, in the end, I think that the indie-market will always be dominated by pulp stories of all kinds, because there will always be a insatiable demand for pulp stories.
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