Here are some of the popular views and opinions of self publishing.
"There are too many terrible self published books for readers to wade through to find the good ones.
" "Without agents/publishers acting as gatekeepers, readers would be overwhelmed with a horde of unedited, suicide inducing novels.
" "Booksellers and libraries will never stock self published books because of their low quality.
" They are true.
Self publishing will never be a mainstream alternative to the traditional industry until we solve the quality problem and earn our reader's trust.
So how do we fix it? Two potential solutions.
A Self Regulatory Organization: Many professions are self regulated.
For example, realtors are regulated by the National Association of Realtors and medical practitioners by the American Medical Association.
The regulating organizations is composed of members of the profession and has an explicit non profit policy.
All members of pay dues and benefit from the quality constraints and consumer trust.
How would such an organization improve the quality of self published books? The organization could require members to review a certain number of books a year or hire people to do so with dues from members.
Members get to display the organization's logo on their books and benefit from a resulting lift in consumer confidence.
This organization would be explicitly non profit.
A Third Party Certifying Organization: Many professions display their commitment to quality by having an independent third party certify their products/services to the public.
An example would be Auditors certifying the financial statements of companies to the public.
A certifying organization would improve the quality of self published books in much the same way as the self regulatory organization i.
e.
by certifying that self published works meet certain levels of quality.
Every writer that is certified can display the certifying logo on the cover and benefit from the lift in consumer confidence.
A disadvantage of the certifying organization is that its objective is to maximize profit ala Auditors and is therefore susceptible to the same profit-mindedness as the publishing industry.
Regardless of what form such a regulatory organization might take, it must fulfill two key responsibilities; improve the quality of self published works and educate the public about the improvements.
No easy task, but it can be done.
"There are too many terrible self published books for readers to wade through to find the good ones.
" "Without agents/publishers acting as gatekeepers, readers would be overwhelmed with a horde of unedited, suicide inducing novels.
" "Booksellers and libraries will never stock self published books because of their low quality.
" They are true.
Self publishing will never be a mainstream alternative to the traditional industry until we solve the quality problem and earn our reader's trust.
So how do we fix it? Two potential solutions.
A Self Regulatory Organization: Many professions are self regulated.
For example, realtors are regulated by the National Association of Realtors and medical practitioners by the American Medical Association.
The regulating organizations is composed of members of the profession and has an explicit non profit policy.
All members of pay dues and benefit from the quality constraints and consumer trust.
How would such an organization improve the quality of self published books? The organization could require members to review a certain number of books a year or hire people to do so with dues from members.
Members get to display the organization's logo on their books and benefit from a resulting lift in consumer confidence.
This organization would be explicitly non profit.
A Third Party Certifying Organization: Many professions display their commitment to quality by having an independent third party certify their products/services to the public.
An example would be Auditors certifying the financial statements of companies to the public.
A certifying organization would improve the quality of self published books in much the same way as the self regulatory organization i.
e.
by certifying that self published works meet certain levels of quality.
Every writer that is certified can display the certifying logo on the cover and benefit from the lift in consumer confidence.
A disadvantage of the certifying organization is that its objective is to maximize profit ala Auditors and is therefore susceptible to the same profit-mindedness as the publishing industry.
Regardless of what form such a regulatory organization might take, it must fulfill two key responsibilities; improve the quality of self published works and educate the public about the improvements.
No easy task, but it can be done.