Avoiding Pigeonholes

Humans love to categorise things. We have this intense need to label things and put them into neat little boxes. Being human, I also have this intense need, and for the most part, categories are great. They help us find the things we like. For instance, I’m not a massive fan of romance focused fantasy, so those can be put into a neat little category of “No thanks” and I can focus on the types of fantasy and sci-fi that I enjoy.

There is also a downside to categories. They come with preconceived notions and ideas. Perhaps the next Great Novel is hiding away in the romantasy genre and I’ll never find it because I’ve written the whole category off. Young Adult has the stigma that it’s all love triangles and teenage angst. Literary fiction has the stigma that it’s all fluff and nothing happens. And independently published fiction, especially self published, has the stigma that it’s of less quality than traditionally published works.

I’ve only been at the review game for six months, but even in that short time I have found that a good number of self published novels are just as good or even better than traditionally published ones. That’s not to say they’re all good. I’ve read plenty that needed some more time in the oven, but that’s not the universal experience. However, over these last six months, my focus has been on small press and self published books, and I think that in some strange and roundabout way, I might have been perpetuating these stereotypes. By being indie only, I’ve been comparing indies against indies. This comes from a good place. I wanted to showcase indie work because good indie books need the help. Traditionally published books don’t need the reviews, their readers will provide them. But by framing my reviews as indie only, I’m saying that indie novels can only be compared to other indie novels. My top five novels of last year were indie, but that’s all that I read for the website.

I want to break the quality stigma, and in order to do that I need to be putting them up against the big publishers. I want people to be sure that when I say a book’s good, that means it’s good, period. Not just that it’s good for an indie book. Whether it’s traditionally published or self published, books should be judged on their merit alone. Books are books, no matter the source.