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Is anyone interested in my thoughts on how self-publishing exacerbates our reading comprehension problems?
Every anti conversation makes me think about our reading comprehension problems...
Every anti conversation makes me think about our reading comprehension problems...
Essentially, it's a vicious cycle. It takes someone with good reading skills to recognize a poorly written work. Someone with poor reading skills cannot tell a well-written work from a poor one, and may, in fact, confuse the two.
Before the advent of self-publishing and ebooks, we had what I'll call a baseline readability. When you picked up a book you expected a certain level of quality. Certainly you expected basic editing. Grammar, spelling, and homophone errors would be negligible if not zero.
Self-publishing changed that. Firstly, because it let anyone publish anything. Secondly, because it let publishers see the level of quality people were willing to accept.
somehow I tweeted without meaning to and had to delete. Gah!So we have people who don't write well, and who don't know they don't write well (hello, Dunning-Kruger effect!) publishing books. Many don't seem to think editing is important, and even if they wanted to have
their book edited, they don't have the skills to tell who is qualified, who does a good job, or which edits to accept.
At the same time, we have readers who also don't have the skills to tell the difference, and is happy to pay for and praise books full of basic errors.
At the same time, we have readers who also don't have the skills to tell the difference, and is happy to pay for and praise books full of basic errors.
How long until some of those errors get propagated? How long until the next "irregardless" or "literally" comes from a popular but poorly written book? Real by Katy Evans was self-published and became a bestseller. Apparently, because it was a steamy read.
It did so well Simon and Schuster picked it up. But it wasn't well-written, and when they republished it, reviewers on Goodreads say they didn't edit it. Why would they? It was a bestseller even with the errors.
Self-publishing revealed that what passed for acceptable, at least among some readers, was a lot lower than previously thought. Not just for grammar and spelling, but for continuity, fact checking, and telling instead of showing. Many readers can't infer from what's implied.
Publishing is a business. Publishers are not above cutting corners if the book still sells. Gradually, that will erode standards. I believe they already have eroded. And that means today's books aren't as well written as they were 10, 20, 30 years ago.
Reading is mental exercise, as well as entertainment. I tend to learn *something* from every book I read, even if it's just a new bit of vocabulary. We learn about different people, places, jobs, and cultures through reading. Gain new insights and new interests.
Fiction, especially science fiction, can help build empathy, to say nothing of skills such as deduction, attention, and retention that reading helps build and exercise. Books teaching you the wrong meanings of words is only the most simplistic way poor editing and writing
damage the experience. Books that tell rather than show don't do anything for your ability to reason and understand. Books that don't fact check impart incorrect ideas about other peoples, jobs, and cultures.
Basically, reading poorly written books don't let you grow or improve in any respect. They let you stagnate at a below-acceptable level of understanding.
Standards drop to match what's currently acceptable. The next group of readers will only be as good as the material available, and there will be new writers coming out of that group. What will they produce? Will the level of acceptable drop again?
Also, there are errors in my TED talk and it pains me.
I feel it is important to say that there are good things that have come from self-publishing. Primarily being representation for people of color and the LGBTQ+ community. People who were getting shut out by traditional publishers not because they couldn't write or tell stories,
but because of bigotry. That's bullshit, and needs to stop.
But there are an awful lot of white, heterosexuals self-publishing and doing a hatchet job of it.
I just feel there should be some sort of quality control aside from what companies are willing to publish.
But there are an awful lot of white, heterosexuals self-publishing and doing a hatchet job of it.
I just feel there should be some sort of quality control aside from what companies are willing to publish.
Simply because reading is so fundamental.
