The browse page seems to be designed for exploration, and thus emulates strolling through a brick and mortar store, drawing your finger along the spines and picking them up as they jump out at you. 

Online purchasers tend to like the maximum amount of information density possible for their time visiting a page. For me, and some like me, the browse is slow because I am used to finding books on sites like Amazon, where I can find books through a list of genres that dial down through breadcrumb list into even more refined genres.  In this search format, I can find all the books of a certain genre quickly, sort through reviews, find recommendations based on other books I’ve purchased, all in moments.  

I’ve seen much of this functionality in the backend of Inkshares. The search box provides access to genres, once you back one book the site brings up recommendations of others you might like. (Just some quick examples.) But what isn’t currently on Inkshares is  quick access to information about books in the same way it can be found on Goodreads or Amazon. We’re still in a brick-and-mortar mindset about user experience, and that slows access to many books.

Now if Inkshares is fine with browse continuing to be a meandering sort of experience, that is fine. It feels much like Netflix in that you come on hoping to find just a nice fantasy book, but end up scrolling through covers until you find something that *might* fit the mood you’re in. 

I just find that for users like me who are used to online book purchasing, I expected less of a treasure hunt when it comes to finding books. 

Don’t worry about other people’s successes, even if they seem to be eating into your own. Odds are, they aren’t. Focus on making the best possible book you can. That’s challenge enough for any one lifetime.

Again.

Again.

Except everyone reading this, including perhaps the author of the "truly awful" book in question, will have a theory as to whom it is. It isn’t hard to narrow this down if people are so inclined to do so. And even if those guesses are wrong, there’s a strong likelihood that someone, and maybe more than one someone, IS getting hurt from this.

It IS unpleasant, precisely because you haven’t really been critical at all and haven’t said anything at all to the person whose book you’re publicly trashing. You’re just taking a passive-aggressive potshot that helps absolutely no one. If your concern is for their feelings and not your own, why not reach out and offer some constructive criticism? Why do this instead? 

You would have made at least that many, because I would have bought a copy based on what I’d read on your project page back in January. I don’t think I’m the only one. But every time I’ve seen you on this site since then, you give off the air that you’re just here slumming it with people who are beneath you while you wait for your publisher to have a change of heart and/or competence. And I honestly wonder, for all your talent, whether you care about your own project as much as some of the "truly awful" writers care about theirs. I’d never say you don’t, because I don’t know you, but this is the impression you leave.

Yes, marketing and networking go a long way on here. I’m lousy at both and hate doing both but I forced myself to deal with my misgivings and figure it all out because I didn’t have a choice if I wanted to make it. And I made it. You can do the same. Exceptions certainly apply, but the good work typically separates itself on here so long as that work’s author is bold enough to audibly stand behind it. But you need to embrace this method of publication and the community it’s created rather than (again, as appearances suggest) regarding it as some second class kindergarten for people who don’t deserve to be published. If you can’t do that, and if you wish to keep rapidly burning bridges instead of building them with the many, many, MANY people in this community who will gladly go to bat for good work, you should just pack up and go somewhere else. The previous pity party bellyaching was merely tiresome, but now it’s getting malicious.