Why Non Fiction Books have such a huge Quality Problem

For most book categories in the ebook store, we have

  1. 5% of books are well written and somewhat well polished
  2. 5% of books are well written and not polished
  3. 10% of books are badly written but well polished
  4. Remaining 80% are badly written and not polished

Basically, only 5% of books are diamonds, 5% are unpolished gems, 10% are polished rocks, and 80% are just brutally bad

In Non Fiction, we see a far gloomier picture

  1. 2% of books are well written and somewhat well polished
  2. 3% of books are well written and not polished
  3. 5% are badly written but well polished
  4. 90% of books are two or more of – stolen articles from the Internet, complete nonsense, badly written, unpolished, 10 page pamphlets posturing as books, unsuitable for human consumption

As opposed to other categories, where 10% of books are well written, Non Fiction only has 5% of books that are well written

Furthermore, Non Fiction has categories of ‘terrible books’ that don’t exist in any other book genre

Why Non Fiction has a Quality Problem

  1. There is a lot of money in lots of Non Fiction categories
    1. But no one is writing good quality books for those markets
    2. Nature abhors a vacuum
      1. These lucrative categories are very tempting for people wanting to make a quick buck
    3. So low quality books fill the vacuum
  2. There are no quality checks
    1. People can just copy Wikipedia articles and sell them as books. And people do
    2. People can just steal articles from blogs and websites and pretend they wrote them. And people do
  3.  There is no check on author qualifications
    1. People who have never lost 10 pounds in their life are writing books on Magic 7 Day 100 Pounds Weight Loss
    2. People with no medical qualifications are writing books on natural cures for cancer
    3. People who have not done a single hour of research on a historic event, are writing history books about it
  4.  There is a strong reward for becoming a ‘bestseller’ in a category related to your line of work
    1. Then build a consulting service or a business based on that
    2. These authors jump in with books that are often unpolished and not well written
    3. As much as 10% of Non Fiction is just people looking to use a book to build their business
  5.  Low Quality Books can just crowd out good quality books
    1. In the time it takes an honest author to write one good quality book
    2. A disingenuous author can pilfer material from the Internet and write 20 books
    3. As the store does a terrible job of filtering on quality, the low quality books just crowd out the good ones
    4. The good author gets discouraged, and is unlikely to write more books
    5. The unethical author gets rewarded, and is likely to continue to spam the book store with low quality dross
  6. There is no easy way to tell who is ‘An Expert’ and who has no clue
    1. Many Non Fiction categories are categories where it is not easy for a reader to tell who is the qualified person, and who is a pretender
    2. Many Non Fiction categories have no ‘big name authors’. There is no Stephen King for herbal remedies. There is no Dean Koontz for weight loss
    3. Often readers are completely new to a category and don’t know how to tell which book will actually help them
  7. The Store has no filtering or sorting based on quality of writing, credibility of the author, or credibility of the information included
    1. Badly written books are treated the same as well written books
    2. A Psychiatry book written by a qualified and experienced psychiatrist, is treated exactly the same as one written by some 17 year old who bought a course on ‘retire from your eBook Money Machine’
    3. A book that straight out lies (lose 50 pounds in one month) is treated exactly the same as a book that is based on 20 years of medical research done on 5,000 patients

These are some of the main reasons Non Fiction books are such a post apocalyptic wasteland in the ebook stores

 

 

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