[JeremyR]

Good. To me, Book publishers are like the big record companies, they peddle crap mostly through the use of marketing (and Oprah).

I would rather read a random book from Smashwords than anything by Dan Brown, or James Patterson's ghost writers, or the vast majority of what makes the bestseller list.

Beyond that, I can think of more than a few now famous fantasy authors that started out simply be retelling Tolkien or writing about their D&D campaign. Which again, seems to be no different than much of the indie fantasy.

And don't get me started on the "clever" idea of re-writing classics by adding zombies or other supernatural elements in it. Once was slightly clever. Now that there are seemingly dozens (including a whole small publisher whose whole catalog seems to be it), ugh.