{"id":4583,"date":"2013-11-22T16:46:55","date_gmt":"2013-11-22T16:46:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/?p=4583"},"modified":"2013-12-16T03:45:48","modified_gmt":"2013-12-16T03:45:48","slug":"everything-thats-wrong-with-ebooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/everything-thats-wrong-with-ebooks\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything That\u2019s Wrong With Ebooks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"815KyITHLdL._SL1500_\"<\/a>So I was brows\u00ading Kin\u00addle books on Ama\u00adzon ear\u00adli\u00ader today and came upon one that thor\u00adough\u00adly pissed me off.<\/p>\n

Tru\u00adly, this book rep\u00adre\u00adsents every\u00adthing that\u2019s wrong with ebooks.<\/p>\n

In the con\u00adtent, adver\u00adtis\u00ading and book cov\u00ader, the author details how a writer can write a book a week, and how turn\u00ading out such a quan\u00adti\u00adty of \u201cwrit\u00ading\u201d is the key to mak\u00ading a lot of mon\u00adey on Kin\u00addle.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s talk about this, shall we?<\/p>\n

Yes, you can get rich writ\u00ading a book a week\u2014when most of your \u201cbooks\u201d are 50 or few\u00ader Kin\u00addle pages, and when you\u2019re writ\u00ading books about how to make mon\u00adey writ\u00ading books for Kin\u00addle.<\/p>\n

Not so easy is writ\u00ading a real<\/em> book a week\u2014say a nov\u00adel. I\u2019d like to see Fos\u00adter live up to his adver\u00adtised max\u00adim that the quan\u00adti\u00adty and<\/strong> the qual\u00adi\u00adty have to be there, if he were try\u00ading to write a nov\u00adel<\/em> a week.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve read a num\u00adber of these ebooks about \u201cget\u00adting rich writ\u00ading books for Kin\u00addle,\u201d and as a life\u00adlong writer who has earned a liv\u00ading as a jour\u00adnal\u00adist, tech\u00adni\u00adcal writer, scriptwriter and speech\u00adwriter (in addi\u00adtion to nov\u00adel\u00adist), I find their com\u00admon asser\u00adtion that there\u2019s noth\u00ading to this<\/em>, that any\u00adone<\/em> can do it, not only insult\u00ading but also dis\u00adhon\u00adest.<\/p>\n

Writ\u00ading is like any oth\u00ader spe\u00adcial\u00adized skill: It takes years and thou\u00adsands of hours<\/strong> of study and prac\u00adtice to do it well. Just as I would\u00adn\u2019t expect that I could go into a den\u00adtist\u2019s office tomor\u00adrow and begin fill\u00ading teeth, no one should expect that they can sit down and dash off an ebook in a week that will make them a lot of mon\u00adey.<\/p>\n

The main prob\u00adlem I have with Fos\u00adter\u2019s \u201cbook,\u201d as well as all of the oth\u00aders that advo\u00adcate writ\u00ading a quan\u00adti\u00adty<\/em> of work for Kin\u00addle, is that they pro\u00admote a writ\u00ading-as-lot\u00adtery men\u00adtal\u00adi\u00adty. They pro\u00admote the idea that a per\u00adson can just churn out a \u201cbook,\u201d and that the pos\u00adsi\u00adbil\u00adi\u00adty exists that they\u2019ll make tens of thou\u00adsands, or mil\u00adlions, of dol\u00adlars from the book with lit\u00adtle effort.<\/p>\n

This writ\u00ading-as-lot\u00adtery men\u00adtal\u00adi\u00adty is bad for Kin\u00addle and indie-pub\u00adlished books in gen\u00ader\u00adal because it low\u00aders the over\u00adall qual\u00adi\u00adty of the work out there, and it rein\u00adforces the idea among read\u00aders and lit\u00ader\u00adary opin\u00adion-mak\u00aders that ebooks (espe\u00adcial\u00adly indie titles) are junk. Well, we writ\u00aders who have worked long and hard at our craft, and who strive to give read\u00aders excel\u00adlent qual\u00adi\u00adty work for their mon\u00adey, resent this.<\/p>\n

We resent ebooks like Fos\u00adter\u2019s, as well as those that adver\u00adtise that it\u2019s easy to amp-up sales of your cur\u00adrent books with a few sim\u00adple changes to your book list\u00adings on Ama\u00adzon. I have read prob\u00ada\u00adbly a dozen of these titles, each time con\u00advinc\u00ading myself that this<\/em> one is dif\u00adfer\u00adent, that this one con\u00adtains the keys to the king\u00addom. Guess what? NONE<\/strong> of them do. These authors are sim\u00adply get\u00adting rich on our desire to sell more of our work, and any of the \u201cfix\u00ades\u201d that they sug\u00adgest, if they help sales at all, are mere\u00adly tem\u00adpo\u00adrary.<\/p>\n

F. Scott Fitzger\u00adald said, \u201cYou don\u2019t write because you want to say some\u00adthing; you write because you have some\u00adthing to say.\u201d Don\u2019t allow your work to become part of the glut of mediocre ebooks on Ama\u00adzon; have some\u00adthing to say, a sto\u00adry to tell, and put your absolute best work out there\u2014every time. You might not rake in the mon\u00adey as Fos\u00adter and his ilk do, but you can take pride in the idea that you are only pub\u00adlish\u00ading good work, and that if you\u2019re sud\u00adden\u00adly tak\u00aden from this earth tomor\u00adrow, you at least will have left some\u00adthing<\/em> of sub\u00adstance, of your\u00adself, behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I was brows\u00ading Kin\u00addle books on Ama\u00adzon ear\u00adli\u00ader today and came upon one that thor\u00adough\u00adly pissed me off. Tru\u00adly, this book rep\u00adre\u00adsents every\u00adthing that\u2019s\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19,33,20,21,36,8,24,25,13,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-fiction","category-indie-publishing","category-journalism","category-kindlestuff","category-mystery-writing","category-publishingandthemarket","category-speechwriting","category-technical","category-writers","category-writingexperiences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4583"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5015,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583\/revisions\/5015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}