Hacker News Reader

Comment by tayo42 | Hacker News Reader

Is that really true about books? Wouldn't you just need to convince someone your going to sell enough and how accurate the information is wouldn't be important? Im sure you can find books or textbooks claiming evolution isn't real.

> meaning it's up to us to sort the wheat from the chaff.

I was thinking about this the other day. How do you sort out conflicting information when your not an expert your self. I don't know who to trust sometimes.

View on HN

That used to be at least somewhat true about scientific and technical books. Major publishers protected their brands by hiring editors with some subject matter expertise. Of course, we understood that those books could be outdated, incomplete, or biased but for established publishers the quality was generally fairly good.

In general you talk to other known experts in the field and see what they say.

If you don't find an expert in the field and you publish a crappy book you tend to get a number of reviews (hopefully before you send it out to retail) that your book sucks.

When selling books about fake evolution you're not looking for an expert in the field, you're looking to see if you have an audience that would eat it up.

You as a buyer have publisher's reputation as a filter. There's still chaff but it's a bit easier to avoid.

This is what credentials used to signal, but I’m not sure they’re as reliable anymore…

Reply on news.ycombinator.com