Just about every person I know has the misconception that writing is easy. Mention that you're writing a book and most of them will say, "Yea, I thought about doing that." Because thinking about it and doing it are the exact same things.
Those people's fantasies are neither here nor there, but what is really disappointing is the number of people on Goodreads author groups who "play at" being writers. Self-publishing is ridiculously easy. Maybe that's the problem. I get how tempting it can be to slap something up on KDP. Everyone thinks of themselves as great, undiscovered writers. Ninety-nine per cent of them are not. (Well, "undiscovered", sure.)
Like any other pursuit, becoming good at writing requires study and practice. Lots of practice. One can be a naturally good writer and still pen a bad book. Structure, stakes, conflict, character; all these matter! The first book I ever published (and quickly unpublished) was a memoir. I just wrote like I was writing a blog post. It came out very short, long novella-length, about 37,000 words. Before I even began, I knew I would need a hook and I came up with a good one. That was extent of my writing knowledge. About halfway through, I ran out of stories, but that didn't stop me. Thus, the first third of the book was good; not good for a beginner, but actually good. Then it fell apart. While at least one of the elements was there, it was missing most of the others.
It didn't get much better with my first novel. I had learned a bit more about writing through study, but I was unable to execute that knowledge. The second novel was even worse, but things after that began to look up. More practice combined with study.
Predictably, most Goodreads posts that allow book links mostly consist of memoir. Of course they do. Everyone's life is a book, right? What I didn't realize when I published my memoir is that no one cares unless you're famous. I was lucky in that mine was built around a universal theme, and I sold a few copies before unpublishing it. But while your life story is interesting to you, it's probably boring to everyone else. (Apparently the first third of my life was interesting. The rest? Ehh.)
The second most popular genre among these posters is poetry. I'm probably the worst person to judge the merits of a poetry book. Urbane podcasters love to rattle off a few lines of a poem they recall, and I wonder, why did they bother memorizing it? Did someone challenge them to do it? How many poems in my life have I memorized? Zero. I fail to see the point. And the glut of amateur poetry books has to lessen their value. I once joked that I could publish a book of my song lyrics and label it poetry. Lyrics without a melody, though, are inherently dull. Just like poems are dull. Don't get me wrong; I think writing poetry is a nice, brain-boosting exercise. Good poetry requires work, just like good fiction does. But like the genre I write in, one has to gauge if there is a market for their poems, no matter how good they are.
A free Amazon preview is vital for buyers who want to separate the wheat from the chaff, and boy, is there a lot of chaff! Every time a writer posts a link to their book I pull up the preview. I need to know who my competition is, after all. I've yet to find a good one and I want to find a good one. One poor guy's first language obviously isn't English ~ he leaves the "s" off plural nouns, he doesn't conjugate verbs correctly. Don't write a book in a language you don't know! Most writers I've perused just dive right in, like I did with my first book. They need to read up on compelling opening sentences.
Believe me, I'm not looking to denigrate these people. For purely selfish reasons I'd rather find a good writer. Competition spurs me on. My beef is that the bad ones are giving self-published books a bad reputation. We independent authors are just beginning to be taken seriously, but too many of these bad works will discourage readers from giving us a chance.
Please, amateur writers, stop promoting your work so much. Concentrate on your craft.
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