
The problem with self-published books - mijustin
http://startupreader.net/the-problem-with-self-published-books/
======
spindritf
_First, I have a collection of unread books sitting in a folder called
“eBooks” on my computer._

 _Second, it’s hard to know which books are good._

I have had those exact problems long before ebooks. I still have a pile of
unread legacy books. Some bought a decade before, others borrowed and never
returned (my local library closed down), many inherited, older than me.

Not to mention, new books are being written all the time while older titles
remain available. You can read a book a week and you'll still be behind...
forever.

This is a direct result of the effort required to really read a book, tens or
hundreds of hours. It's much easier to buy than to consume.

Professional reviewers and a recognizable author's name are the traditional
solutions to those problems. Buying a book from someone whose blog you like
(essentially sampling) is IMHO superior to both. Maybe because I don't share
reviewers' tastes.

A better solution is of course always welcome but the challenge isn't new.

~~~
sonnym
Your book a week comment reminded me of the wonderful What If on XKCD about
the infeasibility of reading every English book ever written.

[https://what-if.xkcd.com/76/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/76/)

------
visakanv
"But instead of reading books regularly, when I sit down with my tablet I end
up reading Zite, Flipboard, and Instapaper."

This isn't a problem with self-published books. I don't have any ebooks at
all. I have two full IKEA bookshelves loaded with actual physical books I want
to read. But I don't read them as regularly as I'd like to. Why? It's because
I don't make time for them, plain and simple. Same reason I don't exercise as
much as I'd like to, or go on dates with my wife as much as I'd like to.

You have to set aside time to do reading, or any important task where the
payoff isn't immediate (in seconds, like 2048), because otherwise it won't
happen because there are so many other things competing for your attention.

~~~
IpxqwidxG
> You have to set aside time to do reading... there are so many other things
> competing for your attention.

+1. If it is not aligned on the lines of "snacking" then it's not meant for
mass consumption on the web.

------
DanielBMarkham
I've been a self-publisher for a couple of years now. (My current e-book is
about backlogs, or to-do lists. Shameless plug: [http://tiny-giant-
books.com/backlogs.htm](http://tiny-giant-books.com/backlogs.htm) )

I've also been a freelance writer since my teens, having been published in
books, magazines, newspapers, and weeklies. And I read like heck. So I know
this arena.

There are a few more problems the author does not mention. The number #1
problem on the internet is that everybody wants to be an author, but nobody
wants to be an editor. You can click a button and poof! You're published. Back
when you had to send it to somebody, and get sometimes biting criticism, you
tended to think more carefully about what you wrote. As a self-publisher, you
have to be extremely paranoid about quality. And even then, what you don't
see, you don't see. It's hard/impossible to replace a good professional
editorial staff.

The second problem is that the physicality of books is different from e-books.
Don't get me wrong: I love e-books. But for certain things, like learning a
new complex skill, I want to have physical books scattered around the office
opened to certain passages with other passages dog-eared or bookmarked.
E-books just ain't the same.

I also wonder if we're not selling a shitload of e-books that nobody is ever
getting around to reading. A lot of people buy books (or e-books) for their
_imagined_ experience -- not for the real one. When you have physical books,
you can see when your stack is growing large. With e-books, it's very easy to
over-consume.

Not sure a book club would help with that, but it would solve the problems the
writer mentions. Perhaps some other features could be added to the group?

(I also need to mention that years ago I started a website for
startups/hackers to recommend and share books. The idea was something like a
social network, but instead of posting or sharing links or status updates, you
posted new book titles and shared them. [http://hn-books.com](http://hn-
books.com))

------
mikeash
None of this has anything to do with self-publishing itself.

You have trouble reading ebooks and, I presume, prefer paper? Self-publishing
is entirely compatible with offering a paper version of the book.

Books that aren't listed on places like Amazon are troublesome? Good thing
it's really easy to get a self-published book on Amazon.

Self-published doesn't have to mean self-everything.

~~~
mijustin
OP here: I definitely don't prefer paper. ;) I actually sold all of my
physical books before my last move.

I think authors moving to self-publishing is a good thing. And when the author
sells directly to the reader (and not on Amazon), he/she can build
relationships directly with the reader, and can earn more money. That's a good
thing.

The problems are:

1\. Discoverability - finding good books that have been self-published by
authors.

2\. Reviews - even on goodreads.com not all books are reviewed, and there is
no way to find books in the startup space. Having a community of people who
can recommend good books on a topic could be valuable.

3\. Interaction - personally, I find interacting with other people that are
reading the same book motivating. Hearing their point of view, and their ideas
for applying a book's topic can improve the reading experience.

~~~
mikeash
That just makes the "collection of unread books" problem even more confusing.

In any case, none of this is due to self-publishing, but rather a particular
approach to self-publishing which does not seem to be all that common.

~~~
Touche
Discoverability is definitely due to self-publishing. If you can't afford to
fund your own book tour you're less likely to reach customers.

~~~
mikeash
Do tech books even have book tours? I could see it for mass-market fiction
books or such, but publishers do roughly diddly squat for getting tech books
in the public eye.

------
Rafert
Just because a book isn't sold on Amazon it doesn't mean you can't find
reviews somewhere else (e.g.
[http://www.goodreads.com/](http://www.goodreads.com/) ).

------
egypturnash
I self-pub comics. Weird sci-fi comics about robot ladies with reality
problems to be precise.

A major part of my business strategy is going to comic book conventions and
sitting behind a table, talking to people who stop there, telling them about
my book and possibly exchanging one for some money. Sometimes I'll have
someone buy my comic and come back the next day to rave about it. It may be
relentlessly physical and retro, but it's working. I feature the URL of my
site in my physical books, and let people comment on new pages as I draw them;
there's a modest amount of back and forth between them now and then.

I dunno what parts of that can be transferred to tech books, I don't think
there's a vibrant network of tech book fairs out there! A book club sounds
like a pretty good idea, really.

(If you're gonna be at ECCC in Seattle this weekend, stop by table CC-09 and
say hi.)

------
krmmalik
I've been having a similar problem myself. I just don't read as many books as
I used to. Part of it is because I just don't want to spend so much time in
front of a screen (I use an iPad to read), and the other is because I just
can't seem to relax enough to get into reading mode, so reading only happens
every other weekend when I can get away from thinking about my work from the
day.

I guess the screen problem can be solved by getting a Kindle with e-ink, but
getting the right headspace is harder.

I like the idea of a book-club, but the problem is I have a list of books _i_
want to get through personally and so my list may not be the same as the book
club. I wouldn't read a book just because it was on this month's reading list
in the book club.

The book has to be of interest to me for me to participate, and there's no
knowing if interests would align well or not.

------
incision
_> "First, I have a collection of unread books sitting in a folder called
“eBooks” on my computer. I want to read these books, and learn from them. But
instead of reading books regularly, when I sit down with my tablet I end up
reading Zite, Flipboard, and Instapaper."_

This is much more a problem with individual habit than publishing.

I saw someone use a perfect term for this - infosugar - the equivalent of
reaching for a handful of Doritos and a swig of Mountain Dew multiple times a
day instead of making a meal of a book.

Personally, I just uninstalled all those apps.

 _> "Second, it’s hard to know which books are good. Because most self-
published books aren’t listed on a marketplace like Amazon (where user reviews
abound), it’s difficult to get a good sense of whether I would enjoy a given
book."_

I'm sure an Amazon listing facilitates collecting reviews, but even then
there's an awful lot of material on Amazon with few, if any reviews. At a
glance, 25-50% of any given category or search has reviews <= 1.

I think the answer here is simply for self-publishers to make more of each
book available to browse online. I'm far more likely to buy a book if I thumb
through it (literally or virtually) beforehand.

In my experience, self-publishers are often terrible about this as they
provide perhaps a fragment of a chapter and sometimes nothing more than a
table of contents alongside a premium price.

Ideally, I think there would be at least a substantial fraction of the book
online to browse. Unless you're selling the promise of "secrets" or whatever
there's probably nothing to fear, cheapskates aren't going to pay regardless.

 _> "We need our own book club."_

I like book clubs, but I really have to wonder about one which sounds like it
would be a pretty damn self-referential. How do you deal with honest reviewing
and priority of titles when both the reviewers and authors are part of the
same reputation economy?

~~~
ivan_ah
> _make more of each book available to browse online._

I totally agree with you. For my books, I give up to 25% of the book's content
as preview because I want to show the book's value. By giving one or two
chapters for free, the reader gets a much better idea of the writing style,
which is good for both of us (I hope).

This makes me thing... maybe there should be an aggregator for book previews?

------
cschmidt
I don't know if any of the rest of you remember it, but my favorite book club
ever was the Global Business Network (GBN)[1] book club, edited by Stewart
Brand [2].

The GBN was a network of "interesting" people, and they would put forward
books. Stewart Brand would take these suggestions, add his own, and write very
insightful reviews. You would really hear about new, interesting stuff there
first. It was a book club in a broadcast sense, where they suggest things to
read, rather than a discussion forum.

Sadly, GBN was acquired and people moved on. For a long time, the list of
books and reviews was still online, but now all of gbn.com seems to be down.

Maybe that could inspire more of a HN book club, which wouldn't just be
"startup books", but interesting stuff in the HN vein.

Edit: [3] is a list of the books for 1988 to 2006, from archive.org

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Business_Network](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Business_Network)

[2]
[http://sb.longnow.org/SB_homepage/Home.html](http://sb.longnow.org/SB_homepage/Home.html)

[3]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20070316053617/http://www.gbn.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070316053617/http://www.gbn.com/BookClubSelectionListDisplayServlet.srv?ok=date)

------
drdeadringer
> I have loads of unread ebooks sitting on my computer.

This was true for me... 10 years ago. Now I have a kindle and all these ebooks
zipped onto a device more suited for reading ebooks. And they're getting read.

> It's hard to tell which books are good.

I find this to be true for All The Books; even if I do find/read favorable
reviews, I can still mislike a book even if it's not independently published.

------
Dotnaught
This is not a new problem. I self-published a sci-fi novel in 2001:
[http://www.amazon.com/Reflecting-Fires-Thomas-
Claburn/dp/073...](http://www.amazon.com/Reflecting-Fires-Thomas-
Claburn/dp/0738866229)

The book sold a few hundred copies, thanks to a few reviews on websites and a
post on Slashdot. The challenges then are the same today: self-publishers tend
to be poor marketers or to not have the time/resources to market effectively;
lack of quality reviews and an abundance of pay-to-play review sites that will
take your money and do very little for sales; self-published titles are (often
justifiably) seen as less worthy than texts backed by an established
publisher; and there's an overall shortage of available attention, thanks to
the abundance of media options today.

>Tools like Draft, Scrivener, and Penflip have improved the writing, editing
and collaboration process.

Technology may make editing easier but it does not improve it. A decent writer
won't need a grammar checking algorithm.

>Publishing software like iBooks Author, Leanpub, Softcover, Pressbooks, and
Liberio allow authors to easily design, format, and publish their books
themselves.

These tools are helpful but there's a reason professional designers exist.

>And e-commerce platforms like Gumroad, Memberful, and Digital Goods Store
have solved the payment and distribution problem.

But these problems pale in comparison to getting marketing and attention.

What's more, these issues are the same for other self-published media: apps,
music, and videos.

I'd love to have my book or my app
([http://blocfall.com/](http://blocfall.com/)) discussed by a reviews group,
but a review in the New York Times or front-page placement in the iTunes App
Store would be a lot more helpful.

------
ivan_ah
I think the idea of a "book discussion page" where readers and the author can
interact is very promising.

In the past I've used an etherpad to "live chat" and collaborate on problems
with students (e.g.
[https://piratenpad.de/p/linearalgebra](https://piratenpad.de/p/linearalgebra)
), but I think a forum dedicated to the book would be more interesting.

It's a win-win situation: the author benefits from receiving feedback from
readers, and readers can connect with like-minded people. Excuse me while I go
learn how to install discourse with MathJax support ;)

> _use drip emails to track your progress through a book,_

Yes. This would be awesome as it might push you to read the book, but it would
have to be done intelligently to work. Just a nagging reminder prodding you to
read won't do it. Maybe receiving a weekly batch of exercises or review
questions?

------
davidw
This isn't so much the problem with self-published books, as with books that
are self-published and more or less "self-sold". I wrote a bit about Authority
here: [http://blog.liberwriter.com/2013/11/21/nathan-barrys-
authori...](http://blog.liberwriter.com/2013/11/21/nathan-barrys-authority/)
and think this is a real problem. I don't like not having reviews. There are
some books that look interesting to me, like this one:
[http://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/books/the-profitable-side-
proj...](http://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/books/the-profitable-side-project)
where I'm a bit reticent because of the lack of reviews and Amazon
integration, combined with a higher price than I'm used to.

I don't think that everyone selling their own books on their own sites is a
stable equilibrium.

------
bridger
I am working on a startup, Understudy, that tries to address this problem. Our
approach is one-on-one conversations. We find you someone to meet with each
week as you go through a book. The first one we are doing is SICP. You meet up
with video chat and a whiteboard on the iPad.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrdjKvka558](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrdjKvka558)

It should be on the App Store soon (awaiting Apple's approval!). If you are
interested in trying it, send me an email. bridger@understudyapp.com

------
einhverfr
This is specifically a problem with self-published e-books with no print copy,
right?

There's no reason you can't publish a hard copy and sell it on Amazon (I did
that, on a topic relatively off-topic for HN).

------
dyeje
I find it fascinating to watch how different 'scenes' of creators (books,
comics, video games, paintings, etc) react to the flooding of their creative
market caused by increased accessibility of participation through technology.
As a musician, it's something I've dealt with for quite some time. It's
interesting to compare and contrast different communities' reactions. Then to
think about how those similarities and differences map to how people in
different mediums think is a whole nother layer of fun.

------
Lambdanaut
I've noticed that the amount of unread books I have actually stresses me out,
so I've come up with a more positive way of looking at my unread book pile.

Instead of seeing my books and thinking "holy crap I'm so behind it'll take me
years to read through just the books I own", I think "This is awesome!
Whenever I'm done with my current book I can go on to read whatever I want.
I'll never run out of potential knowledge. "

The positive outlook makes reading fun again.

If you turn reading into a chore, you'll see it as one.

~~~
cloverich
I"ve had the same problem, and have also recognized that its really a mindset
/ perception problem - the bookshelf I have at home is really no different
than the one at the store. I could never, ever read them all, so I likewise
shouldn't stress about my "read later" list. Its just a repository of
interesting "when I have time for it" items. Thinking like that is not a hard-
switch thats easily flipped, but by consciously recognizing and directing my
thought patterns, its helped.

One random thing that has also helped is (inspired by another post) I
organized my books by color. Silly little idea. But now that they are both "to
learn" and "decoration", i feel less guilty about the ones I haven't read yet.

------
coreymaass
I could see authors creating a forum for their own book, and then leading the
discussion. I'd love the chance to ask questions to an author while reading
their book!

~~~
Mikushi
We've (me and a friend) been working on a publishing platform that revolves
around keeping the connection between author and readers. Using my own book as
test (about 2 months or so away from launch, first draft is in the editor's
hand!): I write about learning the web and learning how to program, targeting
people with no clue. So the idea of a "forum" was a given, I went a bit
sideways from a forum, a searchable knowledge base, stuck on a chapter? Go on
the website, check the knowledge base to see if other user asked similar
questions, if not ask yourself and author will reply.

I think it's a win/win for both authors and reader, as an author this would
enable me to update my book, clarify section that a lot of users are having
trouble with, and for the readers it offers another dimension to a book, you
can discuss it, talk to the author, other users.

I'll probably link it to HN when we are closer to launch.

------
nephics
A book club for startups. It could be interesting, but how would it solve the
problem of prioritising what to read, if everybody is expected to read the
same?

~~~
mijustin
OP here. I think having forums, where a book is discussed chapter by chapter,
could help. You could pick whatever book is already being discussed, and join
the discussion after you'd read that chapter.

There might also be the opportunity for people to self-organize around a
particular book.

------
willaa
No time for reading is the biggest issue which is also an excuse for most of
us. I like the idea of having a book club with interesting people, but don't
you think there are already some meetups out there for that? I found myself
joined "one week a book" meetup but never being committed.

~~~
munificent
> No time for reading is the biggest issue which is also an excuse for most of
> us.

I don't think it's a lack of total time. If many of us could see how much time
we spend on our phones or surfing the web every day, we would likely be
horrified.

It's that we've diced our time into increasingly small slices and want some
sense of completion at the end of each one. We play a ten minute game on our
phones ten times, instead of watching a movie. We finish reading ten blog
posts instead of part of a book.

We never have an appetite for a real meal because we're constantly snacking.

------
mhartl
It might be worth noting that publishing sites like Leanpub and Softcover have
integrated e-commerce features, so they solve the payments and distribution
problems as well.

------
j2kun
A company like Leanpub is in a perfect position to solve the interaction
problem: have a dedicated forum for each chapter of each book it publishes.

