| It's true that a whole lot of important filtering goes on. Otherwise we'd have to put up with Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, when we could be reading polished high-quality titles that twinkle with the elusive literary aura that only publishers can add. [snerk] Here is The Thing: publishing used to be an educated middle class business catering to educated middle class readers. Self-publishing opened the market to less-educated writers producing work for less-educated readers. Amazon basically reinvented the old Victorian penny dreadful market in digital form. Does this matter? Not really. The penny dreadfuls didn't kill literature. In fact, in a round-about way, they eventually launched science fiction and fantasy as genres. Publishers gave up on real literature back in the 80s, when all the old small semi-amateur publishing houses were swallowed by corporate sharks. So don't look for not-crappy there. There is some basic filtering to eliminate people who can't write at all. But Amazon reviewers are getting pickier, so it's not obvious the can't write at all crowd will survive for much longer. Meanwhile, many not-quite-mainstream writers have pulled themselves out of publisher-enforced poverty by selling direct. Is this a bad thing? No, it really isn't. |