Come on, don't malign my attitude based on someone else's comment. I didn't say a word about a good cover. And is it really fair to judge that person's attitude because of one comment either?
mforge, I'm so sorry: I confused you with the person who posted that list. I'll leave my post standing, as deleting it will screw up the thread, but please accept my apologies for coming down on you so harshly over that point.
As for whether it was fair of me or not to judge that person's attitude as I did: yes, I think it was. I see a lot of people focus on marketing and selling their work without considering whether it's good enough in the first place. It is a huge problem for self publishing because the vast sea of really dreadful self published books detracts from the perceived value of the books which have been thoughtfully self published, which isn't good for any of us.
I'm just contesting your assertion that a book being good is the "most important" factor in it's success. It is a factor, to be sure, and one I would hope every author strives for above all others.
As I mentioned before, there are various factors which contribute to a book being "good". In no particular order there's literary merit, commercial potential, established fan base, plot, premise and pacing, pertinence, and so on. If a book isn't judged "good" by the people who matter (in trade publishing that's usually an agent first, then an editor and publisher, then your reader; in self publishing, you skip the editor and agent and go straight to the reader) then it's not going to be a success.
And yes, I too would hope that every author would strive to get their books as good as they can be but I've spoken, online and off, to so many writers who think that productivity is more important than quality, or that readers won't notice their poor punctuation, that I know that sadly it's not the case.
But plenty of mediocre books have been huge successes. And plenty of amazing books (films, music, plays, etc.) have been complete failures from a sales perspective.
That's because "good" isn't only about literary merit; nor does it have to conform with what
you like. If you like books of one particular sort, but books of another sort sell better, that doesn't make the books of that other sort less good even though you've just called them mediocre: it just means that they're good in a different way, they're not to your taste, or that you haven't actually read them but have read articles about them which have told you that they're mediocre.
Of course most people would not publish a book without a potential readership. But a book could be very good and still never find an audience due to a myriad of factors.
People publish books which have miniscule potential readerships every day. Just look at how many books are self published and go on to sell in low double-digits.
I agree that good books might fail to find their audience: I've seen it happen. But books which really are bad? You can promote the socks off them and they're still going to fail to sell proportionately well. If Oprah were to hold up a really bad book then it would benefit from her endorsement: it would experience a bump in sales. But it wouldn't exhibit that huge surge of sales that other better-written books would under the same circumstances.