Self-Published Zombie Titles Have Doubled Since 2012 74
An anonymous reader writes "For the second year in a row, the number of self-published ebooks with the word zombie in their title has doubled. The annual check is performed on Halloween in Amazon's Kindle Store, and this year discovers 8,052 ebooks (with titles like 'Jesus Camp Zombie Bloodbath' and 'Never Slow Dance with a Zombie...') — more than 12 times the number that appear in the Library of Congress. 71-year-old literary author Joyce Carol Oates — twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize — also named her 2009 novel about a serial killer 'Zombie (P.S.'", but most of the titles in the Kindle Store 'aren't as ambitious,' notes this article, which still applauds the self-published authors and their 'massive outpouring of new creativity, as people all around the globe start wondering what's going to happen in their own imaginary zombie scenarios...'"
I suspect the reason they're self-published (Score:3, Insightful)
is because a real publishing house with editors would reject them as poorly written tripe.
(And that Oates went through her publisher, and was not self-published.)
and as a result (Score:5, Insightful)
so is quality control.
Re:Fashion trends (Score:5, Insightful)
More interesting: how does this compare to the overall number of self-published e-books? Afaik self-publishing as a whole is growing fast, too. If the number of self-published titles has doubled, it's no wonder zombie-titles doubled too.
Re:I suspect the reason they're self-published (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh help us, imagine if this happened in the world of software, eeeeish, they'd probably create something like Linux! *shudder*.
Readers are the ultimate choice makers, while big publishing houses can bring some useful services to the writer they're quickly becoming less relevant as the whole industry reworks itself into more independent units for hire ( cover art, editing, proofing, marketing ).