Kindle Unlimited the home to heaps of turgid crap

[plasticpig]

Christopher Hitchens was spot on when he said "Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay". I am not a discerning reader and have read plenty of rubbish books in my time but even I balk at some of the self published crap that appears on Amazon. In theory Kindle Unlimited is a great idea but the thing about properly published books is that someone somewhere thinks there is half a chance of getting a return on their investment for publishing it.

There are gems in the heap but Amazon doesn't help matters by it's limited sorting and filtering functionality. If I could sort and filter by sales/lending rank then maybe I wouldn't have to spend so long wading through the heap to find a gem. Even better would be a filter to only show books which have not been self published. I have just started reading Life Of Pi but I only found out this was available as a Kindle Unlimited book from another forum and not from searching Amazon.

I am not saying all self published books are rubbish as I have found some very good ones. But the gem to crap ratio seems very low and Amazon don;t seem to provide the tools to sift through the crap efficiently.

[jimmyjimjim]

I've read some truly shocking ste on kindle unlimited. Diafkingohmybksical tripe.

Conversely, I've found some real gems.

The trick that I've found is to check out the least favorable reviews. They're by far and away the most accurate; I've ignored them a couple of times, only to find that they were merciless in their accuracy.

Another trick is to avoid long series of books where the first few are on kindle unlimited and the rest aren't.

Unerringly a sign of dross; clickbait under a different name.

[RobDickinson]

Its not just kindle unlimited.

Amazon has been shockingly bad for finding new books for a long time. Even before all the self published tosh. I look in the scifi section and its all full of fantasy or republished old stuff, now its hundreds of self published piles of junk.

give me an option to filter that out. and classify things properly

I did move over to goodreads to find stuff then amazon bought them and ruined that too.

[Reg Local]

Thanks for posting this. My book has been signed up to KU since I first published it, but I get peanuts from the lending fund and it requires me to agree to exclusively offer my book through Amazon and nowhere else.

If the general opinion is that KU is tripe, I think I'll unsubscribe and try a few other ebook suppliers.

[jimmyjimjim]

I've actually read some good feedback on KU for authors.

http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com/2015/08/lets-t...

[plasticpig]

jimmyjimjim said:

I've actually read some good feedback on KU for authors.

http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com/2015/08/lets-t...

Interesting. I have actually read one of her books. IIRC not bad but it didn't grab me enough to read anymore of them. I think I am going to try and persuade a bloke who is putting together a PHD thesis proposal in the AI field to code a system to write fiction. There are quite a few systems writing music so one writing novels should be possible.

[jimmyjimjim]

Wasn't the Eli Monpress stuff was it? Not a fan of that, but enjoyed the one good dragon series a lot.