Publishing and Marketing Your Crap
From author James Scott Bell:
From author James Scott Bell:
Publishing and Marketing Your Crap
Now there is an honestly titled workshop! Or so I thought for about a second. Then I realized what happened was that the subject line in my email viewer cut off the full title. And looking closer I saw that the C was really a G, and the actual title was: Publishing and Marketing Your Graphic Novel.
Nerts! I was really interested in the other one, just to see what the curriculum would look like. So, with a catchy title and no workshop, I now offer some notes on how to publish and market your crap.
1. Write fast, but with this caution: don’t ever worry about growing as a writer. Believe that if you write in a genre, especially erotica, the quality of the writing doesn’t matter.
2. Don’t seek anyone else’s opinion about your writing, especially people you have to pay, like a freelance editor. Save your money (you’re going to need it).
3. Design your own cover.
. . . .
Okay, all seriousness aside, the issue of fast production versus quality of product is crucially important. It was recently given treatment by astute industry observer Jane Friedman. On her blog she suggested that “commodity writing” (as opposed to “literary writing”) has a chance to do well in the indie world because it can be churned out to an audience that reads these things “like candy.”
. . . .
So my bottom line is this. There may be some who argue that quality doesn’t matter and sheer volume will bring in the big dough. Allowing for the occasional exception, I say it won’t. You’ve still got this pesky thing called areader you have to please. If readers don’t like the first book of yours they try, they’re most unlikely to buy any of the other 37.
Yes, quality is in the eye of the beholder. So behold your own work, and kick it up a notch. This is the only way to improve the chances that your books won’t get dumped into the great white bowl of literary obscurity.
Link to the rest at James Scott Bell and thanks to Lynn for the tip.
, Amazon will pay Passive Guy a small affiliate commission on any of your purchases.
…and now the Yang to the previous post.
I see what you did there PG!
I’m either a genius or it’s all an accident, Randall.
I know which one Mrs. PG would choose.
Maybe both? It’s amazing how often those lines get blurred.
Here’s a story, from the book Art and Fear by David Bayles:
“A ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot”albeit a perfect one”to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work”and learning from their mistakes”the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”
Frankly, I think this is true of all the arts. Sure, there will be some crap along the way, but don’t bog yourself down agonizing over how to make a flawed piece perfect.
Also? A number of writers have talked about how the work they think is most flawed is the story that their readers love. Writing is so subjective. Once an author reaches a certain level of competence, they need to start trusting their creative voice, do the best they can, and keep producing words, always striving to improve.
Maybe all writers should have a pen name to use for all the stuff they aren’t willing to publish under their own name. You could put that in KDP Select or throw it up on Wattpad or whatever. You might think it’s crap, but somebody out there might like it. Your stories aren’t doing anybody any good just sitting there on your hard drive…
Did that last year. I’m now making more money on the stuff I thought would cause people to chase me with pitchforks and torches. *shakes head*
I have followed the use-a-pen-name-for-crap advice, but I still haven’t learned to shake the thought that I’m cheating the poor readers out of their hard-earned money. I keep telling myself there’s something for everyone, and this might be someone’s something.
I do. I think of it as me not being in the target audience for that story—though I also do my best to find a beta reader who enjoys it before I publish, to determine what genre it is.
And frankly, I can usually point my finger at why I don’t care for it—so far because those stories are ones I wrote when younger and when Star Trek and Star Wars comprised most of my exposure to sci-fi. (My parents aren’t the fondest of fiction, and particularly not of speculative fiction, so I kinda had to educate myself. Neither of them ever bothered to tell me historical fiction existed, either; I found that really confusing, until I figured it out.)
Still a bit awkward when the author isn’t in the target audience for a story for which folks want sequels…
I don’t know if it’s as popular as his Posleen books, but John Ringo has a going-on-six-books series of which he wrote the first book privately just to get it out of his head so he could work on “real” books. According to him the name of the first one was, right up until publishing, “The Wanker Piece.”
Now, it could all have been a carefully orchestrated plot, but he swears the reason it got published is that he posted a few bits on a forum where people had been complaining that he was taking too long to publish anything new, and said, “Look at this, I have to get it out of my head, but obviously nobody’s going to publish it.”
Then the readers said they’d buy it and the publisher backed up a dump truck full of money to his front door and said, “We’re publishing this. Under your name.”
I still think the pen name is a good idea, but this is a great illustration of the principle that crap is in the eye of the beholder. (That sounds awful. Hand me the Visine.)
I had an idea to do this with erotic shorts. When I started writing, I decided that if I were going to write anything, it was going to be something I wouldn’t be ashamed of. Setting out to write crap diminishes a writer, I think. Still kept the pen name though. At least two out of the seven have been selling. Go figure.
I don’t know that anybody sets out to write crap. I think that the vast majority of what most people might agree was crap in indie publishing is the result more of a Dunning-Kruger problem than of deliberate rape of the Muse.
That being said, I write all my stuff to a reasonable standard, but in fairness I do reach a point where I say, “Good enough. Ship it.” a little earlier than a more refined devotee of Littrachaw might.
Amen. Great story BTW.
And once again someone is equating writing fast with bad quality. Never mind that writing a lot is PRACTICE, and anyone who rises to the top of their field in other arts get there by tons of PRACTICE.
Same old argument, and I tired of it quickly the first few times.
Get this straight: Your process is not everyone’s process. A lot of practice in your chosen field does tend to make you better in said field.
Nuff said.
Exactly.
This whole “If you don’t write like me, you are a crap writer” is getting very old….
Totally I agree.
And by the way, has anybody read the Porter Anderson column that James Scott Bell links to? Cause that guy is even worse than Ms. Friedman and he does quote a few Passive Voice commenters, too. May Terrence at least get some sales from this.
Given that James Patterson writes quickly and well, I have to agree.
Consumers don’t care about the resources that go into a book. They don’t care how long it took, how agonizing it was for the author, who he consulted, which of his peers approve, or whether the sorters call it literary or genre.
They buy what they like, regardless of what we think about it.
Unless you’re GRRM. Then fans tend to get a little “concerned” about how long it’s taking.
And rightly so.
I prefer to err on the side of quality however I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon – Crap Sells.
After reading a very large sample of Amazon top sellers I’ve discovered many of these tops sellers are so awful on so many levels I wouldn’t use them for E-toilet paper.
Whether we like it or not, Crap Sells.
Actually, some books sell in spite of being crap. We geeks call that orthogonality. Crappiness is orthogonal to sales performance for books. It just means that there’s no real relationship between sales and crappiness.
Thanks, William. You’ve nailed it. Thus I assume the inverse is also true. There is no real relationship between quality and sales.
Here’s how I think about this stuff. Imagine your book is a virus that must infect people to survive. I know it sounds icky, but think about it. All that stuff about word of mouth sells books. That means that your readers sell your book (along with the cover, the blurb, and the metadata, but it’s mostly people).
If you could see them from the right perspective, books sales would look just like a graph of an epidemic. It all starts with Patient Zero (that’s you, the writer). How fast your little mind virus spreads depends on many factors, but a lot depends on how easy it is for your readers (the infected) to spread it to others. “Crappiness” is a quality that makes a book less effective at infecting a few people, is irrelevant to the vast majority of people, and actually attracts some people. The crappinessphobes (like you) tend have lots of connections with each other. A crappy book hits your network and it dies. It can hit a crappinessphilic network and flourish, sometimes enough to break out into the mainstream, if it has other qualities that attract “normal” folk.
I view it this way – the luck of the draw – or better, that Woody Allen movie- Match Point. It all depends upon which way the ball/ring falls.
Right time, right theme, right reader, right note. One can try to plan for this in advance, try to account for every variable, to market according to conventional wisdom, but will it pay off? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Crap may stop with me, but my neighbor is probably reading it.
As Mr. Simon pointed out, readers are actually very picky about quality: however, what they see as quality and what publishers, editors and writers see as quality don’t necessarily map onto each other very well.
It turns out that having a book well-edited and written according to particular stylistic requirements wasn’t necessary to get it to sell well: it was necessary to get it published. And since books which aren’t published rarely sell well, editing and stylistic accomplishment were second-order requirements. Now that a book can be published without meeting them, lo and behold, books which aren’t edited and written in a particular style can sell well.
That isn’t to say that ceteris paribus a book which is well-edited and stylistically proper won’t do as well or better than a book which isn’t. It almost certainly will. But a book which isn’t and has a good story and good characters will do better than a book which is and doesn’t.
By Jove, I think you’ve got it! Mind if I repost this?
I would be honored.
The other thing to think of is whether a particular book’s theme hits The Right Buttons. If you’re desperate for a Legolas/Ent hurt/comfort fic, you’ll put up with a lot of crappy writing just to get that emotional rush. If you’re a little broader in what your Button is, you may go for any elf/dryad, elf/rock-spirit, elf/whatever fic, so long as it’s got the elements you adore. But you’re probably still willing to wade through the crappiness, if there’s not a lot of better elf/nature-thingie hurt/comfort stories out there, allowing you to be picky.
50 Shades of Gray hit a lot of people’s Buttons. I dunno why; if I want to read that sort of thing, I tend to write it myself… But it pretty evidently did, such that people were blind to the style bits that grate upon me.
Meanwhile, some of my stuff has hit some people’s Buttons, for which I squee like a little fangirl — though I hope that they’re not having to ignore too many errors to get their fix!
That’s probably a useful way to look at it.
Excuse me, I need to go write some fan fiction now.
I think every writer should look closely at how “50 Shades of Grey” succeeded. First, it had a pretty large built-in set of fans when it was first sold because it had been given away. I don’t know whether those fans bought the book or just sold the book to their friends, but that was pretty key to its success. It got the advantage of network cascading (when all your friends have read a book, sometimes you just have to read the book to be “in”). Each of these cascades took it further and further away from people who had any experience with erotica (and therefore had no quality expectations). Eventually it was being bought by people who would have never bought erotica except that buying “50 Shades” became the thing to do, but discovered they liked it. Presumably, those folks will go on to buy better-written erotica and everybody benefits.
This is true. Erotica + Fanfic is something that the fanfic community knows really well. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that each fanfic reader is discriminating in their reading of it, but hey. Generally, they know their kinks and where to find ‘em.
I wonder if some of the 50 Shades appeal is also permission to read erotica, instead of hide it away? I’d expand more on that (because I love the sound of my typing! And because I think I’m using mental shorthand there…) but A: I have a cat kneading my ribs, and B: I need to finish a chapter.
Definitely crossing fingers that they’ll go on to buy better-written erotica in the future, for a rising tide that lifts many ships. And ‘ships, for that matter.
Permission is huge. A co-worker of mine, who’s not exactly a Fundamentalist but is a pretty stereotypical Eastern Liberal Feminist in most ways, was all over those books. Had I suggested to her that she read what was probably the most successful erotic/BDSM book prior to 50SoG, The Story of O, she would have been deeply offended. (I wouldn’t do that because I hate that book.) But if I had asked her if she’d read 50SoG, she would have (well, she DID) come back with, “Oh, yes, everybody was telling me how good they were.” She posted that she’d finished reading them on her freaking FACEBOOK PAGE.
Also the covers were a stroke of genius, even my 50SoG-despising self must admit. They are not offensive at all, so people weren’t embarrassed to carry them and conservative stores (I saw them at frickin’ Hy-Vee, in Muscatine, Iowa) would shelve them but they are so distinctive that everybody could tell what they were.
Agrees with the author.
Every tired, busted indie meme behind this so-called “workshop”: hit the publish button as quickly as you can, design your own covers, don’t worry about quality, especially with erotica and then quickly make a living writing full time?
Too stupid for comment.
I keep hearing about this alleged advice.
I keep not seeing anybody actually giving it.
I believe the headshrinkers call that “projection.”
You think people are telling indie authors to do what you think indie authors are doing. To be specific, a few of them may be doing it (though see comment about Dunning-Kruger above) but nobody is telling them to do it.
Even Delilah Fawkes, whose Something Awful forum post on “making a living writing smut” was a huge influence on the discussion of indie-published erotica, is quite clear that if your work is not good, nobody will buy it. And none of the authors doing workshops on indie publishing is arguing that quality is irrelevant. If you know one, point them out. Otherwise, I might suggest that what you are doing is removing all doubt. Which is helpful of you but probably not your aim.
Yeah, to say to hurry up and e-pub erotic work is like all those awful Writer’s Digest “how-to” articles of the blockbuster, best selling 80′s and 90′s, which told you which “hot genre” to write in this upcoming year.
I’ve been scouring erotic works, forums and blogs as I get ready for a pen named erotica release. Doing my homework and seeing what else is out there, what it looks like, what the authors say and what readers say about it.
In short, the erotica KDP catgeory is being deluged right now by everyone, their grandmother and their grandmother’s dog. If 50SOG was a mega hit straight from a NYC agents slush pile it would be bad, but since SOG came from the indie-verse…it’s nuts now. Too much of what I see, based on covers and blurbs, is just thrown together. And too much of what I’ve read is of very poor quality and value. IE: also thrown together.
I can’t think of a better way to guarantee indie-obscurity than that, no matter the genre.
I agree with the article.
I do think there is a push in the indie community to write things, throw them up on Amazon fast, and not worry too much about the quality.
I couldn’t disagree with this more.
I think that writers have both a professional and ethical responsiblity that if they are going to charge money for something, it be the best work they can create.
And I think the indie community is risking being associated with lower quality work. That is dangerous.
I feel very strongly about this. I think an artist, and the indie community as a whole, has a responsiblity to the reader – and that means not charging money for something unless you are sure it’s very good. Not guessing it’s good, or crossing your fingers, but knowing it’s good.
That’s my opinion, and I’m sticking by it.
Mira:
Can you provide any specific examples of this push, how it is worded and who is wording it?
‘Cause like I said, I keep not seeing it.
Marc – I read it alot in comments. I don’t remember the threads – but I’m sure it will happen again.
In some ways, these types of things are hard to pin down, because they just sort of flow in the culture, advice from one person to the next.
One place – if you go to Dean Wesley Smith’s blog, you can see that advice there. I think it really started with Dean, actually. I agree with some of what Dean says, but I don’t agree with this.
Also, we’ve had two articles in the last week referencing this viewpoint. That means it is widespread enough to be hitting the mainstream.
I have never seen DWS make the argument that you should not worry about quality. And I have read his entire blog from the first entry.
I have seen him argue that what constitutes “quality” is very subjective, that you never know if a reader will love what you hate, and that so long as the work is readable you shouldn’t be afraid to publish it. And that it’s more important, in the same context, to start on the next thing than it is to try to get the first thing “perfect.”
I have also seen him argue, strenuously, that the idea that quality is only obtainable by endlessly rewriting and wordsmithing your work down to its component quarks and back up again is elitist nonsense.
Those aren’t quite the same thing.
With regard to it being mentioned in articles: these articles seem to be making the same leap you are making, which is understandable even if I think it’s a leap too far. That is, when they are not outright projecting (they think indies are doing this – which most are not – so they think that somebody must be telling them to do it – which so far as I can tell nobody is.)
Let me say that in all fairness I’m sure that somebody, somewhere, on the Kindleboards or something, has said “Oh just publish all your s**t some dumb f****r will buy it and if you have enough up you’ll make a lot of money LOL.” But I haven’t seen anyone who has any sort of actual success in indie publishing or any other credential or accomplishment that would lead a reasonable person to take them seriously say it.
Well, I actually think that DWS IS arguing for lower quality here, but I guess it’s in the interpretation. (But if I can interpret what DWS is saying in this way, so can others).
For example, this:
“I have seen him argue that what constitutes “quality” is very subjective, that you never know if a reader will love what you hate, and that so long as the work is readable you shouldn’t be afraid to publish it. And that it’s more important, in the same context, to start on the next thing than it is to try to get the first thing “perfect.”
is not something I agree with. I think quality is actually fairly objective. Not every reader will love your work, but the quality can still be assessed. I also disagree with the idea that wordsmithing is elitist nonsense. (????) I have no idea what he thinks will hone writing skill if it’s not practice.
In terms of publication, I think writers often should move on and work on something else for awhile, but that doesn’t mean they should throw their previous work out into publication, unless it’s ready. And I think arguing that you should throw something out there IS actually arguing for lower quality.
Like I said above, I think publishing something and charging money for it when you are not sure it is good lacks integrity. I also think it will get Indies a bad reputation, too – in fact that has already started.
But it’s cool with me if we agree to disagree on this.
While your points are all well taken, and I don’t know that there’s a lot more room for expansion, I do want to quickly point out that I didn’t say wordsmithing is a waste of time, nor would I expect DWS to say that. And I certainly don’t believe it.
I said “wordsmithing your work down to its component quarks…” by which I mean, wordsmithing for the sake of change, not wordsmithing for the sake of improvement. To be honest, I find the word “wordsmithing” very off-putting. But in its more innocuous form, which to me translates to “going through your work and looking for phrasing you could tighten up, make sharper, more effective,” and is a special case/subcomponent of “editing,” it’s a thing I actively do and I have no problem with it. In the sense of “melting it down, recasting it, reforging it, tempering it, deciding it’s too hard, annealing it, realizing you’ve overworked it and now you have to start again,” it’s not useful, it’s actively bad, and it’s a waste of time.
I may be making the same assumption/projection I accuse tradpub supporters of in reverse, but my impression is that many MFA-style proponents of Littrachaw think that if you haven’t rewritten something at least six or ten times, with pauses of weeks to years between some of the rewrites, there’s just no way it could possibly have any Quality whatsoever. The possibility that you could lay out your story, go through it once or twice looking for errors and plot holes, tighten it up as you go, and say, “That’ll do” without being a hack and an Enemy of Art doesn’t seem to exist in their universes. And they are entitled to that opinion, just as I am entitled to ridicule them for it.
Marc – I definitely agree with you that at some point, editing for the sake of editing has diminshing returns.
I wish this field had more mentors/teachers in it. That’s what I really think debut authors need. Guidance, teaching.
A violinist, actor, painter will usually seek a good teacher. But writers – not so much. And there aren’t that many good teachers available. Which seems like a shame.
Maybe that is something that will change as indie publishing grows.
I remember reading that DWS argued that beginning writers don’t know enough about editing to do it effectively or judge the results and therefore, they should get their stuff out there. He’s not advocating against thorough editing, just that it’s a waste of time for writers who haven’t yet developed the skills.
I sort of agree, but a writer can only acquire these skills by doing it. Write a novel, edit it, rewrite it, send it out, write the next novel, and so on. My interpretation is that he’s not arguing against thorough editing, just in editing the same book to death, which some of us who have a perfectionist streak tend to do (moi).
That’s also where a competent professional editor can really help. I wouldn’t dream of putting a novel up anywhere without one. I would consider a short story or two.
But that’s just me, and many people on this thread have pointed out, the quality of the writing or the editing of the final product may have absolutely nothing to do with sales. I think the reason there’s so much disagreement on this, is because of that.
But sales are not every writer’s only criterion for getting work out.
See. Sharon, if that is really what DWS is saying, I couldn’t disagree more.
If beginning writers don’t know enough to judge the quality of their work, then the LAST thing they should do is PUBLISH it!
For one thing, it’s probably not going to be a good experience for them. They are highly likely to have low sales or even poor reviews. They could end up feeling very discouraged and embarrassed, and that could make them doubt themselves unneccessarily. They may have plenty of talent, but their work is not ready for prime time yet.
For another thing, it just lacks integrity to say: charge money for something even if you’re not sure it’s good or not.
We need readers, and we should not treat them so disrespectfully.
You just don’t put something out there and charge for it, unless you know that you are returning value for money. To do otherwise is shady.
This is what will give indies a bad reputation, as represented by the article here, and it’s not a good approach if indies want to earn respect and legitimacy.
Traditional publishers, for all of their faults, would NEVER put a work out there not caring about the quality at all (and I’m not talking about a typo here and there). Their reputation is on the line.
As are Indies’.
From Mira: “I think quality is actually fairly objective. Not every reader will love your work, but the quality can still be assessed.”
I disagree when it comes to the writer’s skill, only because I have read reviews for the same book, wherein one reader will sing the author’s praises while another will call him a hack. Quality with reference to skill-level seems to be subjective for the most part, unless it’s so poor as to be unintelligible.
That being said, I think almost everyone can spot a homemade cover done by a non-artist and poor editing, and can agree on what is low-quality. It’s just like looking at your 6-year-old’s drawings compared to Picasso’s work. They’re both out of scale, a little strange (what is up with that face? do I need glasses?), but there’s technical skill present in one and not the other. Those technical details are more quantifiable and therefore judge-able from an objective stance.
I understand exactly what DWS is saying here, or how I interpret him to be saying it. I’ll write a book that I fret about the entire time, thinking it’s going to bore my readers to tears. “This will be the one everyone hates and abandons me over.” But after I’ve finished it, made a great cover, and had it edited, I publish it anyway. And so far, fingers crossed, every one of them has received several rave reviews for being exciting, unputdownable, and wholly not boring. So the lesson for me is this: do the best you can do as a writer, be professional about the publishing part of the business (cover, editing, etc.) and then put it up. Let the readers decide. If it was up to my fragile writer’s ego and self-doubting nature, I’d never have a book for sale. They’d all be molding on my hard drive.
Elle – You’re talking about the self-doubt that most writers have – that’s different from shrugging your shoulders, crossing your fingers and just throwing your book out there.
You have a proven track record of readers and reviews. You understand from experience that your self-doubt is probably not based on the reality of the book; you know that you have proven talent. In addition, you have your books professionally edited.
You aren’t just guessing that you’re publishing high quality work, you know it. You worry that this book won’t be the best you have written, but you know, at heart, it’s decent work. Because boring is different than poorly written. And I believe that you would never even consider putting one of your books out, unless you knew it was well written.
That is different than an author, especially a debut author, hearing someone say: Don’t worry about making it perfect or over-editing it. Just throw it up there. If it’s not the best you’ll do, don’t worry about it. Just go practice with the next book, and maybe alittle money will trickle in to support you while you work on that.
I know these are strong words, but I believe this message lacks artistic integrity and professionalism. And I think that is how the indie community will be viewed if it spreads this message.
I believe the message to new indie writers should be:
Work on your book and make it the best it can possibly be before you put it out to the public. That means taking the time to practice your skills, get feedback, work and re-work your material, and have it professionally edited. Not just copy edited, but content edited. When you put a book out for publication, and charge money for it, it should be something you are deeply proud of. You should believe you are offering value for money. Your book should rival any book in the market for writing skill; and it should be professional and clean copy.
I believe that is what will also earn respect from the Industry community (not publishers, that will never happen, but eventually reviewers, etc.), other authors and readers.
So, that’s my belief, and I feel pretty strongly about it. But, again, I’m okay with agreeing to disagree here.
It’s not that I disagree, necessarily. But I will say that I can keep on editing my book ad infinitum, as can most authors. At some point I have to stop and say, “This is good enough,” and publish. My first book was far from perfect, and went through a re-write after it had been up for several months. With every book I write, I get better. Does that mean I shouldn’t have published all the books I did last year … that I should have waited until I was where I am now to publish my first book? No, I don’t think so; because if I follow that logic, then I would never publish anything. I think we agree that indies should put their best work out there and not take shortcuts. But then you have that problem of people who think they’re writing award-winning literature and it’s just crap. *shrug* No easy answers here, but I am with you on the idea that indies need to keep the quality as high as possible. Indies are publishers running a business. Professionalism is key. In the end, the readers will decide the quality, as it should be.
“But then you have that problem of people who think they’re writing award-winning literature and it’s just crap.”
The crap you will always have with you. (I think that’s in the Bible somewhere, isn’t it?) I agree that indiepub has certainly opened the Floodgates of Crap which, to their credit, the tradpub world held keep at least somewhat closed by their quaint insistence on fiddly nonsense like the ability to spell or write a grammatically correct sentence.
The thing is, while there is a tsunami, in relative terms, of literary poo-poo flowing down the River of Indiepub, nobody reads it. The stuff that tradpub advocates like to point out as illiterate and incoherent nonsense is. No argument. But that stuff does not sell. It is completely misleading to point to it and say, “This is what indiepub encourages, this is what indiepub authors think books should be.” Long before the Internet made their worldwide distribution a possibility, people were selling (or giving away) mimeographed sheets of dreadful poetry or what have you. Nobody pointed at that and said that obviously mimeographs were going to destroy literature and that is what everybody with a mimeograph though was the highest and best use of the technology.
As an educated, intelligent person, I find, say, 50SoG simplistic, irrational and irritatingly banal. But the books contain words which are spelled correctly and the grammar, while not exactly Oxford-level, allows one to understand what the author is trying to describe. Once you reach that level, after that it’s all subjective.
Elle – I think we are fairly close in our perception about this. I agree about perfection – I don’t think perfection is an attainable goal. At some point, you have to say, “good enough” let go and move on.
But the difference is letting it go when you know your book is well-written vs. letting it go and not caring about the quality of it.
When you said: “Professionalism is key” – I completely agree.
Marc – my objection isn’t about whether readers enjoy mediocre work or not. My objection is about encouraging writers to put out anything less than their best effort, and charge money for it. I think that is unprofessional.