An observation about self publishing

Authors do review swaps. They hit the like button for each others books on Amazon. They spam every corner of the internet. They download each other's books to falsely pump their book up on best seller lists, to be recognized. Promotion has become a full time job. Marketing is a nightmare.

As tough as self promotion is on writers, think what it does to readers. Everyone is complaining that sales are down, but, if you downloaded the #1 book in a genre you like, and find glaring spelling errors, bad grammar, and punctuation, would you trust again?

Customers who review these books, and ask the question "How did this book get to number one?" are promptly attacked by the author and his/her friends. They're called a troll, or a competitor with an agenda.

I'm surprised readers buy self published books at all

 Reviewers want money. The readers are again the last thing people think about. Would you trust a reviewer who is being paid to critique a book? I wouldn't. No sane person would.

The cover, the cover, the cover, the cover, the cover.... I see dozens of topics and questions about the most worthless part of a book. It's becoming rare that I see people ask about content.

I've always felt that the criticism of self publishing was slightly unfair, but, after observing the business close up, I'm not afraid to admit that I was wrong. There are many good self published books and authors, but there are enough who don't care about the readers to do the damage that has readers flocking to known authors and traditional publishing houses.

This isn't about the writer, publisher, editor or cover designer. This is about the customer, and if you ignore them long enough, like any other business, they'll go away. Self publishing is cutting its own throat, and complaining about the bleeding.

The sad thing is there's no way to stop it.