Not All Are Equal.

Despite what Goodreads and Amazon reviews may suggest, not all publishers are equal.

I recently read an anthology from a small press, one that was given to me a couple of years ago. I'd heard good thing about this publisher, and I have no reason to believe they are anything but honest and supportive of their writers. This particular book had excellent reviews and ratings on the above mentioned websites, and I was looking forward to delving into this particular collection.

4.5 stars?  Give me a break. Family and friends, and possibly authors themselves, bumping up ratings.

As you may have surmised, I found it was well below average.
There were misspellings, sentences that were incoherent, absent punctuation, swapped homonyms, and generally sloppy layout. Editing? I wonder if that even occurred. Oh, and most of the stories were just poorly written.

I'm not even sure if this press is still operating. I haven't heard them mentioned in a while and I haven't googled. If they are, I wish them well and hope they have improved.

Your product is your greatest advertising. People won't buy a second if they are underwhelmed by the first. And, of course, this is the same for writers. Send out your best work, polish it and proofread to make sure it's close to perfect. Choose where you allow your work to be seen.

I guess this is one of the reasons I have decided to not go down the self-publishing road. The whitenoise of mediocrity is deafening. I have yet to personally stumble across any self-published work that I would consider recommending. I am sure they exist, and I know of the famous exceptions, but they are the tiniest of minorities. I don't even bother anymore.

And please, don't self publish then tell me you did so because your work has been rejected everywhere. It's hardly a glowing endorsement. Yes, editors and publishers make mistakes or reject stories that don't suit them, but maybe, just maybe, there's a reason no one wanted to buy your work.

Mediocrity rules. OK.

Waleed Aly won the Gold Logie last night for best Australian TV personality. And he deserves it. Indeed, if I voted in such things, I'd have voted for him. Congratulations, Waleed.

But Aly is a lighthouse in the current ocean of televised mediocrity. Even the awards ceremony was awful. I lasted about five minutes before I shut the door. And I wasn't even watching them - only listening. My wife switched them off two minutes later.

So much of the so-called "talent" on TV these days have had their fifteen minutes. And many of them shouldn't have had that much. Where are the quality actors, writers, directors and producers? And not every person on television is a "star". Even fewer are "superstars".

But this acceptance - nay, encouragement and reward of mediocrity extends well beyond the world of television. I've picked up books by people who can't write, edited by people who can't edit. Not everyone is a writer. Not every person who writes deserves to be published. And not everything we write should be shared with the world.

Which is why I've chosen not to self-publish. It certainly has its place, but I believe new writers need to achieve a level of recognition and validation (through editors and established publishers) before heading down that track. And there's a wonderful need for a trunk - for all those stories that have been rejected everywhere.

In a discussion like this someone usually mentions Andy Weir at this point, or Hugh Howey. Of course there are exceptions. There always are. But naming a few successful self-published writers out of the millions and millions means little. The e-world is drowning in self-published mediocrity (or plain awfulness) and we simply don't need any more.

I admit it. I don't read self-published work. I tried with a couple of pieces that were recommended to me, and they simply weren't very good. I might pick one up again if someone I trust were to rave about something they'd found. That raving endorsement has never happened to me yet.

Let's be clear. This isn't an attack on self-publishing. I know some writers who swear by it, and I know some who have had great success through it. It's not for me, though, and I suspect it's not for the majority of writers who out every word they write up online.

There's too much whitenoise. Too much crap. It's difficult to sort the chaff from the wheat without a recognised imprint. But its our fault. We reward mediocrity. We tell our friends, our kids, our colleagues that they are outstanding, no matter what they do. We accept and watch film and television that is average, we read books that are average, and we give them four stars on IMDB or Goodreads.

It's time to start being honest. Not hurtful, not attacking, but to stop rewarding work that is just not very good. Don't give five stars because you know the author. Don't give five stars because it has a character/theme/storyline that doesn't get enough "airtime". Don't give four stars because it's comedy SF from Australia, or because really we don't get enough of either and want to encourage it. Give it the two stars it deserves and explain your reasoning in the comments.

Save the five stars for work that moves you, makes you think, work that pops into your mind a month later.

It's Full Of Stars

Last week I read where a writer was upset they'd only received a 3 star rating for a novel on Goodreads.

I love Goodreads. It's a fun site, and I use it as a guide when I'm researching books to read. But I also consider it to be wildly inaccurate at the same time.

Let's say a local author with a pretty good debut gets 5 stars. That's as high as the rating system goes. Really? It's so good that it can be compared with the greatest literature of our time?

Okay, so we liked the book, enjoyed it enough to consider buying the next offering. But 5 stars is too high, so we drop it down to 4.

Fair enough. Let's jump over to IMDB and check out some of our favourite TV shows. Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, West Wing - all sitting between 7.5 and 8.5. Hmm, so they're averaging (quick maths conversion) 4 stars.

Is our friend's debut as good as those?  To be honest, no. Those shows are amazing. Alright, so we have to drop it to 3 stars, if we're going to be fair. But now that's not looking so good. It's average. We don't love 3 stars, we think it's an OK rating reflecting an OK read.

We all get a bit hung up on ratings these days. And with good reason. With the increasing onus on authors to promote their own work, reviews and ratings seem to be one way to try and stand out above the crowd. These days, unfortunately it seems everything on Goodreads is above average.

I've seen poorly edited, poorly written self-published novels receive 5 stars. I've seen brilliant classics receive 1 star. I know we all have different tastes, but you have to question how much we can trust these reviews and ratings.

I've been fortunate enough to receive some 5 star ratings for my stories. (And no, it wasn't from my Mum - they were from strangers and even professional reviewers.) They made me very happy indeed, but I don't think I would compare my writing, which I consider to be still developing, to some of the all time greats.

Not yet anyway.