Blah blah blah crowdsourcing blah blah blah.
Crowdsourcing hasn't really worked for self-published music on iTunes, and it will work even less well for books. For crowdsourcing to work, you need a critical mass of people who have already read the book and who can offer their opinion on it. But good luck getting 1000 people (at a minimum) to invest 8+ hours in reading a self-published book and then offer constructive feedback. This hasn't really worked well for music, where songs are only ~3 minutes long.
The idea of a "market" includes the concept of "transaction costs." Even in a market where there are very low barriers to entry, the transaction costs for a reader to wade through the dreck and - maybe - find something he would like to read are very high. For me, and for most readers, they significantly exceed the cost of spending ~$10 to buy a published book, even if I buy it in e-book form.
So as of now, the market has spoken and books from traditional publishers are winning, due to the important and valuable winnowing function that publishers provide. Undoubtedly this means that some deserving books are left by the wayside - but it's too expensive for me (considering the time value of money) to find the one self-published book in 1,000 that is worth reading. (Or 1 in 100, or 1 in 50 - you can choose your own metric.)
Slashdot Mirror
Blah blah blah crowdsourcing blah blah blah. Crowdsourcing hasn't really worked for self-published music on iTunes, and it will work even less well for books. For crowdsourcing to work, you need a critical mass of people who have already read the book and who can offer their opinion on it. But good luck getting 1000 people (at a minimum) to invest 8+ hours in reading a self-published book and then offer constructive feedback. This hasn't really worked well for music, where songs are only ~3 minutes long. The idea of a "market" includes the concept of "transaction costs." Even in a market where there are very low barriers to entry, the transaction costs for a reader to wade through the dreck and - maybe - find something he would like to read are very high. For me, and for most readers, they significantly exceed the cost of spending ~$10 to buy a published book, even if I buy it in e-book form. So as of now, the market has spoken and books from traditional publishers are winning, due to the important and valuable winnowing function that publishers provide. Undoubtedly this means that some deserving books are left by the wayside - but it's too expensive for me (considering the time value of money) to find the one self-published book in 1,000 that is worth reading. (Or 1 in 100, or 1 in 50 - you can choose your own metric.)