Novels reach the hands of their readers through reviews, recommendations, bookshops, libraries and readers’ groups. Naturally enough, readers want books that have the kind of objectively-awarded, quality hallmark that comes from being published by a traditional publisher. There is no such hallmark for self-published books.
Ever since I took a ten year break from writing and fell off my perch with mainstream publishers, I have tussled with this question: how can writers of thoughtful, well-written fiction assure potential readers that their work is worth reading? We swim in the vast ocean of self-published material, which has no arbiter of quality at all.
When I set up writersreadersdirect.com, I hoped to help myself and other skilled writers of thoughtful, entertaining novels to reach a readership. But the business of selecting the better from the worse was tiresome and time-consuming. Marketing and publicity were impossible on no budget at all. I now just look after myself, bringing out my recent novels on Amazon and contenting myself with a very small readership among my known contacts.
Every so often my mind reverts to my headline question. I know of Goodreads, of course, based in the US. For an outlay on review copies, you can get your novel reviewed but where do the reviews get you? Nowhere very much. Today I’m thinking of the many readers’ groups in England whose members read literary novels of a good standard. I wonder if it would be possible to marshall the support of these keen readers? Trouble is, they like to borrow the books on their lists from libraries, rather than buy them. So they don’t actually support the writers of those books, leaving aside the small sums that come from PLR to the authors who are most read in any case. If each group agreed to include one self-published novel a year in their reading list, chosen from a small selection circulated by … but here the mind fogs over.
We need something on the lines of an apple-sorting system. If there was a way to run novels down a shute which only let the well-written fiction drop into the collecting box, we’d have the necessary quality control in place! Has anyone out there got any ideas? And/or fellow feeling?