For most book categories in the ebook store, we have
- 5% of books are well written and somewhat well polished
- 5% of books are well written and not polished
- 10% of books are badly written but well polished
- 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
- 2% of books are well written and somewhat well polished
- 3% of books are well written and not polished
- 5% are badly written but well polished
- 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
- There is a lot of money in lots of Non Fiction categories
- But no one is writing good quality books for those markets
- Nature abhors a vacuum
- These lucrative categories are very tempting for people wanting to make a quick buck
- So low quality books fill the vacuum
- There are no quality checks
- People can just copy Wikipedia articles and sell them as books. And people do
- People can just steal articles from blogs and websites and pretend they wrote them. And people do
- There is no check on author qualifications
- People who have never lost 10 pounds in their life are writing books on Magic 7 Day 100 Pounds Weight Loss
- People with no medical qualifications are writing books on natural cures for cancer
- People who have not done a single hour of research on a historic event, are writing history books about it
- There is a strong reward for becoming a ‘bestseller’ in a category related to your line of work
- Then build a consulting service or a business based on that
- These authors jump in with books that are often unpolished and not well written
- As much as 10% of Non Fiction is just people looking to use a book to build their business
- Low Quality Books can just crowd out good quality books
- In the time it takes an honest author to write one good quality book
- A disingenuous author can pilfer material from the Internet and write 20 books
- As the store does a terrible job of filtering on quality, the low quality books just crowd out the good ones
- The good author gets discouraged, and is unlikely to write more books
- The unethical author gets rewarded, and is likely to continue to spam the book store with low quality dross
- There is no easy way to tell who is ‘An Expert’ and who has no clue
- 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
- 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
- Often readers are completely new to a category and don’t know how to tell which book will actually help them
- The Store has no filtering or sorting based on quality of writing, credibility of the author, or credibility of the information included
- Badly written books are treated the same as well written books
- 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’
- 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