I do think people often miss out when they shop by aura rather than content, but that doesn’t change the reality that many people do shop that way, and it’s something that must be taken into account and addressed head-on as the paradigm changes.

And the reality is that a lot of what’s out there is crap, both in print and online. So people look for filters, and tend to cling to ones they think are effective. That’s why “auras” cling so long.

I thought Things Fall Apart was an amazing book.

“But the current challenge of POD, apart from the mainstreaming of it into an older late-adopter demographic, is the aura it still carries of ‘vanity publishing’ ….”

Maybe. I now look online for most of my reading. For whatever it may be worth worth, here’s how I shop:

I start by reading the first few lines, sometimes the first paragraph, of the piece.

This actually works well: in the past, it’s eliminated all online fan fiction (and I would really like to to have found ‘Strawberry Panic’ ffic worth reading).

If the first paragraph demonstrates that the author has technical competence (oh, I am such a bad, bad elitist), I’ll look further in the book, at least two more randomly selected paragraphs. If I now enjoy what I’m reading, I buy the book.

Many years ago, I picked up a book of Achebe, tried this. After the first paragraph, I had to sit down: I was stunned. Should I have been put off by the fact that Achebe is African, and we all know there’s no good African literature, don’t we?

I believe that people who choose by aura rather than content and skill are going to miss out on some very good fiction. For example, there’s a lucent story on my hard disc, apparently downloaded circa 1993, titled ‘Alien Jane.’

I wouldn’t want to have missed that ….