@shadowwalker, I don't know where you are at or your TV connection, but, yes, some have get rich quick schemes, but others are fad diets, DIY home improvement, cookbooks, etcetera. True, few novels are advertised, but I've seen some. Another way they are advertised is by "the movie." LOTR has sold more copies of the book as well as the DVD's, as an example. Usually, though, the infomercials are for something like Dr. Ordin's [sp?] book on diets and home remedies. Books are advertised on TV and even on the radio.
I interpret an indie publisher as a small publisher, small enough that the publishing entity *is* the business, as opposed to being a substidiary of a subsidiary of a conglomerate. ("Oh, do we own them? Huh.") But to fit my definition they would nevertheless operate on traditional publishing principles--choosing or rejecting books and taking the same responsibility for all aspects of publishing, including paying for all aspects, that a larger traditional publisher does. POD, vanity, etc., I would not consider indie publishers. There might be "indie vanity presses", again small companies that let you pay them to print your book, but I wouldn't call them publishers.
Cheers for the link, I'll check it out in a bit. As for your question - actually, quite often, but then again I live in Prague and the reading culture might well be different to that of the UK or US. However, it is true that the books I do see are often of similar genres or the same authors. Jo Nesbo, Me and Mr Darcy (I think was the title), some other Czech titles I've seen which are usually in the chick lit genre, judging from the book covers, and 50 Shades. These are almost always on the wall along the escalators in the metro.
That's the type of books I'm talking about - nonfiction and often of dubious value to anyone but the author. Personally, I pay little attention to ads for books unless it's (as mentioned above) by an author whose next work I've been waiting for. Persuading me to buy a book otherwise - no effect whatsoever.
Actually, I've seen a few for novels that are regular commercials. Few and far between, still they are there. Some Robin Cook mystery seems to ring a bell...
For the first time in several years, I just bought a self-published book. The author has a great blog and is part of a great community of blogs. The book got good reviews. The cover looked very professional. (In fact, I strongly suspect that the author got professional advice for the cover, but nothing else.) The introductory sample read well. It was the type of book--a non-fiction book of information--that self-publishing is most likely to be successful at. And the book was once again a waste of money. The typography was just that little bit "wrong" that made it hard to read and distracted from the content. I don't even know exactly what was wrong--kerning issues? Muddy font? Line spacing too wide or (grabbing a professional produced book for comparison) too narrow? The photographs are muddy; they probably needed a professional to tweak them, and also higher quality paper. There are groups of photographs where the reader is supposed to compare images, but the muddiness and distracting background makes that essentially impossible. The writing is error-free but not engaging enough; my eyes kept on sliding off the page and I had to drag myself back into the paragraph. There's a voice there, but that voice needs an editor to make it shine. This book is the saddest of self-publishing mistakes--a book that had real potential that was thrown away through lack of professional input. The author did everything *almost* right, but that "almost" was enough to make the book a waste of money. I'm not sad when somebody self-publishes junk; the junk is no sadder between covers than it was on the author's computer. I'm sad when somebody self-publishes something that could be good, but that somebody doesn't have the expertise to see the ways in which it's not quite good enough yet. Yes, this is anecdotal. But I wanted to explain why I, at least, will be avoiding self-published books for a while longer.
that's what i see as being the commonly accepted definition in the publishing world, too, cf... it's puzzling [and annoying] to me to see advocates of vanity/self-publishing using the term to refer to companies that authors have to pay, instead of being paid to have their mss turned into books, as the big guys and 'indies'/niche presses do...
----- Looks in the direction of his atom interferometry lab... looks at the temperature readings on MSN (25 f... Wow! It's a heat wave!)... tips back in his chair, looks toward the heavens to smile at whoever was responsible for giving him the patience to learn Blender, Poser, write in Pascal apps that actually do something meaningful... thinks about the remaining ice in the arctic ocean projected to be gone by next September and the new volcano beneath the Antarctic... thinks of how Gribbons and Plagueman got it backwards about S. California sliding into the Pacific --- Oh! I'm logged into a thread and sitting in my boxers! How embarrassing! Well, sister, you might decide to be less annoyed at conventional conundrums. In 5 or 10 years those cheap, terribly written/edited works might be all that someone around the Cascade Range has to pass the time. Y'never know. The cover art might be from me
