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And it's time to start acting as critics.

Oh geez.

 

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There are so many good replies here, and I can see that some opinions will always vary. Thank you everyone for saying what you mean with so much coherence. It's helpful.

I just wanted to reply here to one thing from the second post:

It tells me that you're comfortable asking readers to pay you so that you can get better.

I am comfortable asking readers to pay to be entertained. The same way that I pay to be entertained. (I'm also a reader.) If they find my stories entertaining, I hope they will pay for them (rather than pirate them). If they don't, I certainly don't want anyone to spend money for something they don't want to read. I hope they even use the return function on Amazon if my stories really aren't good enough for them.

As for getting better? No, I'm doing that on my own. I've been doing that for a very long time now with thousands of hours of practice and learning. I will continue to try to improve.

 

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As far as standards...um...I think the fear is, whose standards? Chuck Wendig's? Yours? Mine? I can tell you right now, if my self=published books have to jump through some kind of hoops, then I should be able to call for the traditional published to jump through hoops too--maybe hoops set up by indie publishing. I can tell you right now that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter would have tripped going through the hoop I'd set. Dumbest book ever and poorly written to boot. And yet, traditional publishing hyped it and made it a bestseller! I want to check to see where the publishers keep their smoke and mirrors.

That was very well put, Mary!!

I think the people who were upset by Mr. Wendig's blog entries, and I was one of them, were upset by the judgmental tone. The "here's somebody it's easy to pick on so let's mock them" tone. I don't want bad books. I don't want to read or publish them. But when the "let's rally" tone and the mocking tone come into play about books, well, it sets my hackles up. I once actually defended a book I hate to someone who was mocking it--a traditionally published book--so this is a bit of an issue for me.

There's just something about an outsider looking down on people that rubs me the wrong way. And there are already a lot of people judging writers. It takes guts to publish, and that's fine. But it doesn't take any guts to mock poorly written books that got published.

Indie or traditional.

 

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*eats popcorn*

 

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I literally LOL'd.