The dark side of the Kindle

There are plenty of freebies to be had on the Kindle store. Many are old classics in the public domain, converted to Kindle format by enthusiasts so people can read them free of charge. But others are less well-regarded.

I'm talking about those released by writers without a publisher who want to see their name in print.

It's easily possible to release a book of your own on the Kindle. A Word document can be converted using Amazon's own programme, and then released (complete with artwork, provided you have some) at a price of your choosing. It's no-risk self-publishing. Amazon take from any profits you gain, but you can still get a load of money, as proven recently by one man who recently sold his millionth ebook on the Kindle.

The problem it that it's too easy. Why go through the effort of trying to find a proper publisher when you can just upload a file and have people download it for little or no cost? Why risk rejection when you can be guaranteed to see your name in print? It won't make much money, but it'll still be there. And for me this risks killing the legitimate publishing industry, with the standard of writing dropping.

If I want to read a novella, I'll generally look for something by a writer I know. I downloaded Sublimation Angels by Jason Sanford not so long back, for example. It had a cost (a couple of pounds, if I remember correctly), but I knew what I was getting. I knew I was getting something that had previously been published in Interzone and serialised on StarShipSofa. It had got the seal of approval of the industry before being released as an independent ebook. Needless to say, I enjoyed reading it.

On the other hand, if I'm cash-strapped, I might want to delve into the free ebooks. Some will have come from legitimate publishers, of course, and if they have that's a nice bonus, but quite a few have probably come via self-publishing. And having experienced a couple, the quality isn't great.

It's easy to go for self-publishing for the Kindle, simply because you don't have to improve your writing style and quality for a chance at making some money. The one I picked up recently wasn't bad per se (it had an interesting story), but the writing was lacking. There wasn't any flair or originality. It seemed to be a stock collection of clichéd dialogue and substandard action scenes ("No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die" etc). An editor at Interzone would have taken a look at it and thrown it out. On getting the rejection slip, the writer would have had the incentive to look at his work and improve. With this system, there isn't an incentive.

One of the biggest things I find worrying, though, is the potential to sideline major publishing companies and - even worse - smaller publishing houses and their imprints by the flooding of the market with cheap, substandard stories. A glance at the top sellers in SF for the Kindle at the moment tells me that there are a few 'big' titles from professional publishers selling well (Surface Detail is one; A Clash of Kings another), but will that last long?

And if people get used to less than mediocre fiction, what does the future hold for fiction in the future? We already see the Dan Browns and Stephenie Meyers of the world - complete with their advertising juggernauts - dominate bestseller lists, while more intelligent, better written books are pushed into niches. We're constantly told (or, at least, I am) that being a bestseller is a mark of quality, so are we going to find twenty years down the line that children, having been brought up on cheap, poorly edited ebooks, think of those as being the zenith of literature?

It's all hypothetical at the moment. But it's a worrying thought. It could be that a potential saviour of the publishing world turns into its destroyer, and that would be a real shame.

Kindling the imagination

I liked The Invisible Man. It would be fair to say I also liked the price-tag. Thanks to owning a Kindle, I was able to get hold of the H.G. Wells classic in a 20-novel collection for 71p, which works out at under 4p per novel. Don't mind if I do.

I doubt that many people would turn their nose up at the chance to read the likes of The Invisible Man, War of the Worlds, The Lost World, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days for that kind of price. And that's just one thing that makes owning a Kindle worth it. I've also been able to download the complete works of William Shakespeare for 70p. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is another book I've enjoyed that came for a minuscule price tag; or, as most people call it, free.

There are quite a few books out in the public domain these days. In theory, they're all available for free, with the copyright having expired. And in general it is possible to get hold of these works for free (generally, you're paying for the work people have put in compiling them all into one electronic volume, creating the links and the bookmarks and the contents pages and what have you). And, what's more, it's worth it.

Reading Frankenstein over the weekend was highly enjoyable. For all its faults - as a modern reader would see it - such as stilted, unrealistic dialogue and occasional overwritten passages, it was a good old-fashioned story, a ripping yarn as some of us more rustic folk would say. And all after one click of a button. The same goes for The Invisible Man, which I shot through in just under 24 hours.

So what else is out there? For the more romantically inclined (in other words, not me), there's Pride and Prejudice to get stuck into. (My own personal opinion is that it's grossly overrated, but those thoughts are for another blog). Horror fans who haven't yet read Dracula can do so without spending over the odds for a Penguin Classic edition complete with a redundant introduction from a contemporary writer. And racists among us can enjoy Heart of Darkness free of charge (again, that's an argument to be made for another blog).

So there's loads of free reading material out there to get stuck into, if you have a Kindle. So what if you're not thumbing through a book itself; chances are many of these classics generally wouldn't cross your path and here's a great chance to try something new (or old, as the case actually is).

Next up for me and my Kindle is The Island of Doctor Moreau. I'm looking forward to it. Expect more posts about my Kindle fairly soon...