The OP's estimate of a "thousand" similar books is charitable at best. It's just rare to see a botched vanity novel get this level of exposure. Which goes back to the content marketing you mentioned.
To be more specific, this is a perfect storm of zero barriers to entry, public schools maleducating new authors about what good writing is, and the dominance of "content is king" tactics on social media.
If you're a new writer working on your first novel, I implore you: Take a brutally honest look at your work and ask "Is my goal to produce and market a professional quality book, or am I seeking validation?" If the former, hire a professional editor. If the latter, all the best - but for your sake and the good of the whole industry, please do not publish the book.
That is why I usually tell new writers, if the try to write a book first, to stick it in a drawer for a year and do other projects before thinking of publishing it. When you come back, it will astonish you how bad it was - and also how much you have grown just by practicing the craft. But that's for people who are interested in developing their talent rather than just looking for the easiest path to "being" an author.
It's solid advice. And I can confirm that from personal experience. I did exactly that with my first novel, wrote a prequel in the interim, then had the older book professionally edited before publishing it. That book went on to earn me thousands of dollars and a Dragon Award.
You might not like to write pieces like this, but this is an important one. If independent upstart writers want to make make a difference, make a dent in the marketplace, they have to be as good OR BETTER than what readers can get by conventional means. This ties into Alexandru Constantin’s lament that the indie fiction scene has no good critics or spirit or criticism at all. This is what boosterism gets you. It’s great to be supportive, but honesty is also important.
What the scene really needs are critics that aren't also indie fiction writers. It's a big gap. I don't usually review indie fiction because I can't have clean motivations. Chances are, it's someone in my sphere.
So weird he would write a work of fiction. I'd think he'd be much better suited to writing non fiction about castles and other medieval stuff. Kind of like Micheal Jordan ditching the Bulls to play baseball.
I have to say I don't mind so much waiting for Comicsgate books to come out since they are usually pretty good. EVS's stuff is genuinely incredible. I avoided Isom though because the art didn't look good and I don't care about Eric July.
If he made a book that was something like "Medieval Warfare for fantasy writers: everything you need to know for your knight in shining armor" it would killed!
And with Isom, the only reason I can get anyone to say to buy it is that Eric July is Based.
Maybe he is, but that doesn't mean I'll just buy a book, especially when it looks rather boring.
I read "Shadow of the Conquerer" last autumn. Well, technically I listened to it since I grabbed it with a free Audible token. I had hoped for a decently written fantasy story that would feature some of the Medieval knowledge that Shad's compiled over the years. What I got felt like a simultaneous knockoff of Warhammer Fantasy and The Wheel of Time with the grimdark elements ratcheted to 11. Don't get me wrong, I myself enjoy dark fantasy and yes, even some grimdark material when it's handled well. I've read some Warhammer 40k stories that I thoroughly enjoyed, but the reason I enjoyed them is because they understood how to balance the dark elements with characters that you want to read about.
Plenty of people harp on Daylen for plenty of good reasons. His often bitter and hostile nature makes him unpleasant to read about. His actions in the past are beyond reprehensible and the fact that he gets off with a "punishment" that doesn't even qualify as a slap on the wrist is a slap in the face to the audience. He's a Gary Stu - literally given his powers by an unseen force on the justification that his new life as a superhuman is somehow a punishment, his version of those powers is completely unique compared to everyone else, and he can figure them out just because the plot demands he reasons them out. All very valid reasons for disliking him and the book. My reasoning is admittedly simpler:
It's a bore. A cheap, trashy, forgetful bore. I legitimately forgot I read it until his video where he went over the reviews he got came out. It had no lasting impact on me whatsoever, and considering I actually enjoy and write dark fantasy myself, I'm the kind of reader who should've enjoyed something like that. I couldn't, there was simply too little of worth to latch onto because Shad doesn't understand the proper way to balance a dark fantasy story. Dark fantasy is nowhere near it's best when it's just grim and edgy and full of badass action. It's at its best when it puts the human elements of the story in the forefront - grit, struggle, love, hate, death, suffering, life, perseverance, and heroism. Even if the characters are dour and dark, they can and should still showcase heroic qualities. Daylen doesn't do that, he acts on a feeling of obligation and fights and kills with the same level of brutality he's described as having done when he was young, constantly forgetting the lessons he supposedly learned along the way.
As another person mentioned, if he had written "Medieval warfare for fantasy authors" it would have been a real killer and big money maker, but I think what he dreamt of was being an "author."
And to "boring" - that is something I come across with lots of new authors wanting to write fantasy. The first "chapter" is an infodump and their focus is entirely on the worldbuilding and a DnD style rule set the concocted to make it seem coherent and Sandersonian. The book is full of irrelevant things that the writer himself liked to write or think about, rather than things that are necessary to understand the story and allow it to progress. Hearing from others, it sounded like this book was really just a prologue or first act! Again, that's something that I see with new writers.
I've noticed the same trend myself over the years. Though my Substack is still fairly new and I haven't published anything physical yet, (I'm in the process of getting one of my best received novellas ready to publish, fingers crossed it happens this year) I've been writing and studying writing for at least the last two decades. If I opt to count the really awful stuff I wrote as a young teen when the spark was first lit in me, it's closer to 26 years.
I'll admit it here and now: I've made a lot of the exact same mistakes Shad made, a lot of the same ones you list in your comment, and numerous more besides. I needed to make those mistakes and have them pointed out by my professors and peers when I studied fiction in college so that I could develop a thorough understanding of why they were mistakes. I studied as many forms of writing as I could in school - short fiction, novel writing, essay writing, and some poetry - for a full decade across high school and college, all to build that basic foundation. Proverbially speaking, I stumbled and tripped over my own two feet in an effort to learn to walk, that I might one day run.
I'm considerably more well read and practiced than I was even two years ago, to say nothing of the decade it's been since my last fiction writing class. Even with all of that, including a handful of friends and classmates I still have contact with who did go on to be self published, I still held off to make sure I was ready both in terms of my ability and understanding in the craft, and to have a project that I knew I absolutely wanted to turn into a proper book I could hold in my hands. It took until the last half year before I finally felt as if those criteria were met. Given how hard I worked to ensure my best effort was put forth, it absolutely chafes at me to see Shad fail to recognize the same basic errors in his own work that I've heard him rail against multiple times.
I remember my first stories, man were they bad. I've since changed style, and while I like some of the ideas in those stories, I've renovated, changed and reformed them into better ones and retooled them. I've also moved away from some of the stylistic stuff and preferences I had, and moved firmly into an older style and a more Tolkienian/Howardian direction with my fantasy fiction with a touch of Mark Twain.
All I can say is that I've reached the same conclusion as yourself David Stewart, best to drop the first book you write and to not touch it for a year before moving back to reading it as you suggested before writing a new story.
I appreciate this article. I was one of those who followed Shad's youtube channel and purchased his book b/c of the parasocial relationship. I tried reading the book, but couldn't get past the beginning and shelved it for later. Based on the reviews online, I would have forced myself to trudge through what appears to be a rather unpleasant experience, as I'm not particularly fond of "grimdark".
One of the things that I find most surprising about "Shadow of the Conqueror" is just how far it ventures into grimdark edgelord territory.
Shad Brooks always comes across as a "big softy" and a romantic in his videos. He waxes poetic about his wife and creates AI art of her as various characters, avoids using strong language (due to his Mormon beliefs), passionately defends Kenneth Branagh's "Cinderella" (a very traditionally romantic/chivalric movie), criticizes many modern movies for promoting bad messages to today's youth, and has made videos intended to give young men advice on how to avoid the dangers of modern times.
Based on his YouTube content, I would imagine a book written by him to be along the lines of Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe" or Howard Pyle's "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood", or maybe even Tolkien's works. Fit for all ages and full of heroism, chivalry, and chaste romance. Seeing him write a book whose slogan could have been "George R. R. Martin, hold my beer." feels incongruous.
Now, I'm not saying that he's actually like Daylen (the character in his book) or that his squeaky-clean image is a facade. As far as I know, he really is as he appears. But it's one of those things that just feels strange.
Perhaps the strangest thing, though, is that on the one hand he chose to make the hero of his story an amalgamation of Hitler, Stalin, and Vlad the Impaler with dash of Jeffrey Epstein thrown in for good measure, yet gets extremely defensive at any criticism of the book. If you're going to go that edgy, you should be prepared for the reaction to be (at the very least) mixed.
I think he was probably going for a Christian-themed story of forgiveness being an unearned gift and available even to the most guilty people (perhaps inspired by Fr. Don Ennio Innocenti's disputed claim that Mussolini converted to Catholicism in his last year of life, or something similar), but based on Planefag's review, I don't think he executed the idea well at all. Or maybe some of his approach was based specifically on Mormon ideas, but I don't know enough about Mormon teachings to know.
"Read and write short fiction (definitely read short fiction first if you’ve never been exposed to it)."
Here's something that Ray Bradbury said on the subject:
"The problem with novels is you can spend a whole year writing one and it might not turn out well because you haven’t learned to write yet. But the best hygiene for beginning writers or intermediate writers is to write a hell of a lot short of stories. If you can write one short story a week, doesn’t matter what the quality is to start, but at least you are practicing. And at the end of the year you have 52 short stories. And I defy you to write 52 bad ones. It can’t be done.
At the end of 30 weeks or 40 weeks or the end of the year all of sudden a story will come that is wonderful. That is what happened to me. I started writing when I was 12 and I was 22 before I wrote my first decent short story. That is a hell of a lot of writing, a million words, because I was doing everything wrong…
Write short stories and you will be in training and you’ll learn to compact things, you’ll learn to look for ideas, and the psychological thing here is that every week you’ll be happy. At the end of the week you’ll have done something. But in a novel you don’t know where the hell you are going. At the end of a week you don’t feel all that good…
I waited until I was 30 before I wrote my first novel. That was “Farenheit 451,” it was worth waiting for. I was fearful of novels. I recognized the danger of spending a year on something that might not be very good. And your second novel might not be very good, and your third one. But on the meantime you can write 52 or 104 short stories, and you are learning your craft; that’s the important thing."
I think the grimdark stuff is just his influences coming through. It was the big paradigm in the 2000s within popular fantasy. Even Wheel of Time tends to have an emphasis on the ugly and "real."
And my main pushback against the advice to write short stories is that most people wanting to write a book don't read short fiction. When Bradbury was young short fiction was everywhere and he was probably reading it all the time, but post 2000 it is very rare in the popular market. So if you want to write short stories, you have to start by reading them, and that is an active, not passive action.
Just wondering, but would you happen to know any examples of fiction that does the Story of Redemption of it's main character who was previously a villain well without revelling in bad 80s/90s comic book tropes or deconstructionist GRRM fantasy?
Asking because I was hoping Shadow of the Conqueror would be that, but I may have been sorely mistaken.
It depends how you want to frame that. Most pre-1980 "antihero" stories are that in some form, like Thomas Covenant or even Elric. The hard part, as this book might show, is convincing the audience that a character can and should be redeemed, but perhaps harder is showing HOW he can be redeemed at all. Most evil characters don't stop what they are doing unless they have a road to Damascus moment, and in fiction such moments can feel contrived unless they are the inciting incident.
If you look outside of books, the theme you want is present in several Final Fantasy games, but especially in Final Fantasy IV.
I'll take your word for it for Final Fantasy IV (I need to play some good Rpgs anyway).
This might be me beating a dead horse, but I'm interested in finding good examples of this because I have a story idea in mind that calls for a Redemption Arc as inciting incident. I'm still reading a lot right now to have a better grasp on writing, so I'm trying to find inspiration material.
I admit I bought SotC AND the audiobook without sampling or reading reviews, just based on Shad’s vids at the time and because he got a talented voice actor to read it. I couldn’t finish it. And as for his behavior these days, I’m sick of seeing thumbnails of him red-faced and shouting about the latest mainstream travesty.
I like Shad the youtuber but I don't follow him blindly. It's funny that you should bring him up, because it was one of my favorite indie authors who started the noise about his book and AI art opinions. I doubt she'll get credit because she has such few views on her channel, but before she started pointing these things out, these issues of his were largely ignored.
There is a lot of bad indie books, which is why I'm shy to publish and why I'm careful about what I buy. I like your work and the work of others on this platform, but finding new ones is always a gamble.
That being said, I still read trad-published work, and I can say with confidence that most of it isn't that great either.
The problem with lack of filtering in the indie space is quite real, and makes me discouraged to buy an indie book based on the concept or customer reviews alone – I basically need to become convinced about the author before I buy the book, or receive a recommendation from someone whose opinion I trust. But this is a pretty high bar and has limited scope.
However, at least around here, the trad publishers don't serve a purpose as filter either – or rather they have become a negative filter. i.e. I can count on them to never promote anything good or truthful or beautiful.
My go to solution is to go with the classics. Time is the best filter.
The OP's estimate of a "thousand" similar books is charitable at best. It's just rare to see a botched vanity novel get this level of exposure. Which goes back to the content marketing you mentioned.
To be more specific, this is a perfect storm of zero barriers to entry, public schools maleducating new authors about what good writing is, and the dominance of "content is king" tactics on social media.
If you're a new writer working on your first novel, I implore you: Take a brutally honest look at your work and ask "Is my goal to produce and market a professional quality book, or am I seeking validation?" If the former, hire a professional editor. If the latter, all the best - but for your sake and the good of the whole industry, please do not publish the book.
That is why I usually tell new writers, if the try to write a book first, to stick it in a drawer for a year and do other projects before thinking of publishing it. When you come back, it will astonish you how bad it was - and also how much you have grown just by practicing the craft. But that's for people who are interested in developing their talent rather than just looking for the easiest path to "being" an author.
It's solid advice. And I can confirm that from personal experience. I did exactly that with my first novel, wrote a prequel in the interim, then had the older book professionally edited before publishing it. That book went on to earn me thousands of dollars and a Dragon Award.
You might not like to write pieces like this, but this is an important one. If independent upstart writers want to make make a difference, make a dent in the marketplace, they have to be as good OR BETTER than what readers can get by conventional means. This ties into Alexandru Constantin’s lament that the indie fiction scene has no good critics or spirit or criticism at all. This is what boosterism gets you. It’s great to be supportive, but honesty is also important.
What the scene really needs are critics that aren't also indie fiction writers. It's a big gap. I don't usually review indie fiction because I can't have clean motivations. Chances are, it's someone in my sphere.
Amen brother.
So weird he would write a work of fiction. I'd think he'd be much better suited to writing non fiction about castles and other medieval stuff. Kind of like Micheal Jordan ditching the Bulls to play baseball.
I have to say I don't mind so much waiting for Comicsgate books to come out since they are usually pretty good. EVS's stuff is genuinely incredible. I avoided Isom though because the art didn't look good and I don't care about Eric July.
If he made a book that was something like "Medieval Warfare for fantasy writers: everything you need to know for your knight in shining armor" it would killed!
And with Isom, the only reason I can get anyone to say to buy it is that Eric July is Based.
Maybe he is, but that doesn't mean I'll just buy a book, especially when it looks rather boring.
I read "Shadow of the Conquerer" last autumn. Well, technically I listened to it since I grabbed it with a free Audible token. I had hoped for a decently written fantasy story that would feature some of the Medieval knowledge that Shad's compiled over the years. What I got felt like a simultaneous knockoff of Warhammer Fantasy and The Wheel of Time with the grimdark elements ratcheted to 11. Don't get me wrong, I myself enjoy dark fantasy and yes, even some grimdark material when it's handled well. I've read some Warhammer 40k stories that I thoroughly enjoyed, but the reason I enjoyed them is because they understood how to balance the dark elements with characters that you want to read about.
Plenty of people harp on Daylen for plenty of good reasons. His often bitter and hostile nature makes him unpleasant to read about. His actions in the past are beyond reprehensible and the fact that he gets off with a "punishment" that doesn't even qualify as a slap on the wrist is a slap in the face to the audience. He's a Gary Stu - literally given his powers by an unseen force on the justification that his new life as a superhuman is somehow a punishment, his version of those powers is completely unique compared to everyone else, and he can figure them out just because the plot demands he reasons them out. All very valid reasons for disliking him and the book. My reasoning is admittedly simpler:
It's a bore. A cheap, trashy, forgetful bore. I legitimately forgot I read it until his video where he went over the reviews he got came out. It had no lasting impact on me whatsoever, and considering I actually enjoy and write dark fantasy myself, I'm the kind of reader who should've enjoyed something like that. I couldn't, there was simply too little of worth to latch onto because Shad doesn't understand the proper way to balance a dark fantasy story. Dark fantasy is nowhere near it's best when it's just grim and edgy and full of badass action. It's at its best when it puts the human elements of the story in the forefront - grit, struggle, love, hate, death, suffering, life, perseverance, and heroism. Even if the characters are dour and dark, they can and should still showcase heroic qualities. Daylen doesn't do that, he acts on a feeling of obligation and fights and kills with the same level of brutality he's described as having done when he was young, constantly forgetting the lessons he supposedly learned along the way.
As another person mentioned, if he had written "Medieval warfare for fantasy authors" it would have been a real killer and big money maker, but I think what he dreamt of was being an "author."
And to "boring" - that is something I come across with lots of new authors wanting to write fantasy. The first "chapter" is an infodump and their focus is entirely on the worldbuilding and a DnD style rule set the concocted to make it seem coherent and Sandersonian. The book is full of irrelevant things that the writer himself liked to write or think about, rather than things that are necessary to understand the story and allow it to progress. Hearing from others, it sounded like this book was really just a prologue or first act! Again, that's something that I see with new writers.
I've noticed the same trend myself over the years. Though my Substack is still fairly new and I haven't published anything physical yet, (I'm in the process of getting one of my best received novellas ready to publish, fingers crossed it happens this year) I've been writing and studying writing for at least the last two decades. If I opt to count the really awful stuff I wrote as a young teen when the spark was first lit in me, it's closer to 26 years.
I'll admit it here and now: I've made a lot of the exact same mistakes Shad made, a lot of the same ones you list in your comment, and numerous more besides. I needed to make those mistakes and have them pointed out by my professors and peers when I studied fiction in college so that I could develop a thorough understanding of why they were mistakes. I studied as many forms of writing as I could in school - short fiction, novel writing, essay writing, and some poetry - for a full decade across high school and college, all to build that basic foundation. Proverbially speaking, I stumbled and tripped over my own two feet in an effort to learn to walk, that I might one day run.
I'm considerably more well read and practiced than I was even two years ago, to say nothing of the decade it's been since my last fiction writing class. Even with all of that, including a handful of friends and classmates I still have contact with who did go on to be self published, I still held off to make sure I was ready both in terms of my ability and understanding in the craft, and to have a project that I knew I absolutely wanted to turn into a proper book I could hold in my hands. It took until the last half year before I finally felt as if those criteria were met. Given how hard I worked to ensure my best effort was put forth, it absolutely chafes at me to see Shad fail to recognize the same basic errors in his own work that I've heard him rail against multiple times.
I remember my first stories, man were they bad. I've since changed style, and while I like some of the ideas in those stories, I've renovated, changed and reformed them into better ones and retooled them. I've also moved away from some of the stylistic stuff and preferences I had, and moved firmly into an older style and a more Tolkienian/Howardian direction with my fantasy fiction with a touch of Mark Twain.
All I can say is that I've reached the same conclusion as yourself David Stewart, best to drop the first book you write and to not touch it for a year before moving back to reading it as you suggested before writing a new story.
I appreciate this article. I was one of those who followed Shad's youtube channel and purchased his book b/c of the parasocial relationship. I tried reading the book, but couldn't get past the beginning and shelved it for later. Based on the reviews online, I would have forced myself to trudge through what appears to be a rather unpleasant experience, as I'm not particularly fond of "grimdark".
One of the things that I find most surprising about "Shadow of the Conqueror" is just how far it ventures into grimdark edgelord territory.
Shad Brooks always comes across as a "big softy" and a romantic in his videos. He waxes poetic about his wife and creates AI art of her as various characters, avoids using strong language (due to his Mormon beliefs), passionately defends Kenneth Branagh's "Cinderella" (a very traditionally romantic/chivalric movie), criticizes many modern movies for promoting bad messages to today's youth, and has made videos intended to give young men advice on how to avoid the dangers of modern times.
Based on his YouTube content, I would imagine a book written by him to be along the lines of Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe" or Howard Pyle's "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood", or maybe even Tolkien's works. Fit for all ages and full of heroism, chivalry, and chaste romance. Seeing him write a book whose slogan could have been "George R. R. Martin, hold my beer." feels incongruous.
Now, I'm not saying that he's actually like Daylen (the character in his book) or that his squeaky-clean image is a facade. As far as I know, he really is as he appears. But it's one of those things that just feels strange.
Perhaps the strangest thing, though, is that on the one hand he chose to make the hero of his story an amalgamation of Hitler, Stalin, and Vlad the Impaler with dash of Jeffrey Epstein thrown in for good measure, yet gets extremely defensive at any criticism of the book. If you're going to go that edgy, you should be prepared for the reaction to be (at the very least) mixed.
I think he was probably going for a Christian-themed story of forgiveness being an unearned gift and available even to the most guilty people (perhaps inspired by Fr. Don Ennio Innocenti's disputed claim that Mussolini converted to Catholicism in his last year of life, or something similar), but based on Planefag's review, I don't think he executed the idea well at all. Or maybe some of his approach was based specifically on Mormon ideas, but I don't know enough about Mormon teachings to know.
"Read and write short fiction (definitely read short fiction first if you’ve never been exposed to it)."
Here's something that Ray Bradbury said on the subject:
"The problem with novels is you can spend a whole year writing one and it might not turn out well because you haven’t learned to write yet. But the best hygiene for beginning writers or intermediate writers is to write a hell of a lot short of stories. If you can write one short story a week, doesn’t matter what the quality is to start, but at least you are practicing. And at the end of the year you have 52 short stories. And I defy you to write 52 bad ones. It can’t be done.
At the end of 30 weeks or 40 weeks or the end of the year all of sudden a story will come that is wonderful. That is what happened to me. I started writing when I was 12 and I was 22 before I wrote my first decent short story. That is a hell of a lot of writing, a million words, because I was doing everything wrong…
Write short stories and you will be in training and you’ll learn to compact things, you’ll learn to look for ideas, and the psychological thing here is that every week you’ll be happy. At the end of the week you’ll have done something. But in a novel you don’t know where the hell you are going. At the end of a week you don’t feel all that good…
I waited until I was 30 before I wrote my first novel. That was “Farenheit 451,” it was worth waiting for. I was fearful of novels. I recognized the danger of spending a year on something that might not be very good. And your second novel might not be very good, and your third one. But on the meantime you can write 52 or 104 short stories, and you are learning your craft; that’s the important thing."
Here's the full Bradbury lecture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W-r7ABrMYU
I think the grimdark stuff is just his influences coming through. It was the big paradigm in the 2000s within popular fantasy. Even Wheel of Time tends to have an emphasis on the ugly and "real."
And my main pushback against the advice to write short stories is that most people wanting to write a book don't read short fiction. When Bradbury was young short fiction was everywhere and he was probably reading it all the time, but post 2000 it is very rare in the popular market. So if you want to write short stories, you have to start by reading them, and that is an active, not passive action.
Just wondering, but would you happen to know any examples of fiction that does the Story of Redemption of it's main character who was previously a villain well without revelling in bad 80s/90s comic book tropes or deconstructionist GRRM fantasy?
Asking because I was hoping Shadow of the Conqueror would be that, but I may have been sorely mistaken.
It depends how you want to frame that. Most pre-1980 "antihero" stories are that in some form, like Thomas Covenant or even Elric. The hard part, as this book might show, is convincing the audience that a character can and should be redeemed, but perhaps harder is showing HOW he can be redeemed at all. Most evil characters don't stop what they are doing unless they have a road to Damascus moment, and in fiction such moments can feel contrived unless they are the inciting incident.
If you look outside of books, the theme you want is present in several Final Fantasy games, but especially in Final Fantasy IV.
I'll take your word for it for Final Fantasy IV (I need to play some good Rpgs anyway).
This might be me beating a dead horse, but I'm interested in finding good examples of this because I have a story idea in mind that calls for a Redemption Arc as inciting incident. I'm still reading a lot right now to have a better grasp on writing, so I'm trying to find inspiration material.
I admit I bought SotC AND the audiobook without sampling or reading reviews, just based on Shad’s vids at the time and because he got a talented voice actor to read it. I couldn’t finish it. And as for his behavior these days, I’m sick of seeing thumbnails of him red-faced and shouting about the latest mainstream travesty.
I like Shad the youtuber but I don't follow him blindly. It's funny that you should bring him up, because it was one of my favorite indie authors who started the noise about his book and AI art opinions. I doubt she'll get credit because she has such few views on her channel, but before she started pointing these things out, these issues of his were largely ignored.
There is a lot of bad indie books, which is why I'm shy to publish and why I'm careful about what I buy. I like your work and the work of others on this platform, but finding new ones is always a gamble.
That being said, I still read trad-published work, and I can say with confidence that most of it isn't that great either.
The problem with lack of filtering in the indie space is quite real, and makes me discouraged to buy an indie book based on the concept or customer reviews alone – I basically need to become convinced about the author before I buy the book, or receive a recommendation from someone whose opinion I trust. But this is a pretty high bar and has limited scope.
However, at least around here, the trad publishers don't serve a purpose as filter either – or rather they have become a negative filter. i.e. I can count on them to never promote anything good or truthful or beautiful.
My go to solution is to go with the classics. Time is the best filter.