With the increasing abundance of resources to help writers create, publish, and advertise their works, comes an increase in new less experienced authors. It seems that everyone who wants to be an author can! This gives people, who otherwise would never have written a book, the opportunity to share their stories, but how does this affect the quality of literature? How do we decide what is worth reading?
Accidentally submitted the revision before I was finished and can't edit the revision. Writers in the title shouldn't have the apostrophe. There are also a couple grammar mistakes in the body of the post itself. – nsnow9 years ago
This is interesting! Would be good to explore how although anyone can now write, becoming an author and making a living out of it is a lot harder than before. It's quite paradoxical but does make sense, and would be interesting to research. – Rachel Elfassy Bitoun9 years ago
Things to consider:
Websites like http://nanowrimo.org/ that motivate people to write their book in a month. This gives people a community of motivation and also a written commitment to finish books they may usually have never started or given up on.
Amazon's self publishing gives author's a free way to publish the books straight to ebook format. They no longer need to go through the hoops of a publishing company and/or editors.
Bookbub provides advertising of books and coaxes people into reading them since they are free or reduced price. All these loopholes can let lower quality writing filter out to the public without being corrected/fact checked. – Tatijana9 years ago
Great topic. It may be worth going into some success stories of self-published authors too, such as Hugh Howey's Wool series or the evolution of Scott Sigler's Ancestor from free audibook to current TPB. – mattdoylemedia9 years ago
This is an amazing idea, and one's answer to it really depends on what you think the goal of writing is. Some more traditional, ivory-tower, "Great Books" viewpoints on literature is will probably be really frustrated at lots of subpar, self-published authors, since the goal is to produce technically excellent literature with sweeping, universal themes. However, if the goal is self-expression, and the ability to understand other people, then having a multiplicity of voices is wonderful, because it lets underprivileged writers, who might not have otherwise had a voice, get heard. – thekellyfornian9 years ago
I think this would have to focus on the many avenues of publishing and less on the actual act of writing. Everyone has always been able to write, but now we're in a time when Amazon and other websites allow you to publish your work and sell it. Also, maybe mention the most commonly purchased genres from self-publishing. – Austin Bender9 years ago