All of my life I have devoured books. As a child in school, when we were handed out the order forms for books I would circle every one, unable to narrow down to a modest number. As the books were cheap, my mother allowed me to buy as many as I wanted. I was always the only one in class who ordered the most books, and I would go home and quickly read them all. I've always loved to read.
A trip to a bookstore roughly cost me about sixty bucks, give or take, and I spent my early adulthood cognizant of this fact, and completely okay with it. I have always needed a large stack of unread books at my disposal, something to gaze upon and know that there were good things to come once I curled up with them.
Then came the Kindle. It took me all of about five minutes to convert from a "real" book to a digital edition. Having lived in the sticks for the majority of my life, the ability to get a book on demand, without driving an hour to a bookstore, was priceless. And suddenly, I became a bit out of control. With the simple click of a button I could purchase a book, and for the first few Kindle years, that was okay because the prices of Kindle editions were reasonable. Then that stopped.
And suddenly I was getting HUGE bills, as I paid upwards of $11.99 for a book. A book that required absolutely no costs to create (as in paper, distribution channels, etc.) but was just thrown on a web site. Hey, as an author I don't want to take anything away from the authors of the books I read, but a little common sense needs to prevail here. There is NO COMMON SENSE to charge the same for a digital edition of a book as a printed one. Absolutely none. While I am happy to pay for the services of the author having actually written the book, I see no reason to cover the cost of things that aren't actually happening (like paper being used, etc.) So I went on a bit of a boycott, and decided that I was no longer going to pay that much for books. It has been hard. But I think I have developed a system.
First of all, there are authors out there that I follow that I will pay the souped up price because I want to read their books. But I am no longer seeking out any new authors who are being published in the traditional manner, because I no longer want to pay those completely trumped up prices. So I can no longer read book reviews on mainstream content because I don't want to be tempted, and if you mention New York Time's Best Seller list, then count me out. I believe that the new paradigm of publishing is closer than it's ever been before -- and I am willing to help it along with my participation.
Self-published authors (and even traditional authors who have turned to self-publishing) are aware that finding readers for their books is difficult. So many have turned to the strategy of providing one of their books for free, which is "advertised" by various channels who send out emails or have websites pointing readers to the free books. Now why would an author give their book away for free? Why, to get readers! Now, you can't be a lazy author if you use this strategy, because ultimately you want a reader to read your free book then fall in love with your writing style and be more than happy to pay for your other books. But you need other books! While it is true that I have slogged through a lot of poorly written crapola in this free way of reading, I have absolutely come upon some gems and was more than happy to buy their other books. It's not as easy as buying books straight from Amazon after reading a review about it, because you have to take a chance and read an author you have never heard of before and has no one talking about them. But through websites like www.goodreads.com, you can find out from other readers what they think, as well as www.amazon.com, though for the majority of these freebies, they don't have that many reviews yet.
It's about creating a network. Through goodreads, I follow other readers whose recommendations and reviews I agree with, and then can find other books that I also enjoy. And I too, have followers, who will read a book based on my recs as well. The key to finding reading material via reviews is knowing who is a true reviewer and who is just putting up glowing reviews because they are friends and family of the author, etc. And it is through time, like any relationship, that you grow to know who you can trust.
In a way, it is almost like a job, taking on books out of the ether based on the fact that they are free, and hoping to find a gem. I am going to have to learn to STOP reading when I discover they are poorly written and overall bad. Right now, I just can't do that. As a natural born optimist, I always believe that it just has to get better! But ... in truth, that's rarely the case. Bad is bad!
In the end, I just want to read good books. And publish them too!
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