Elfwreck, every time you post, I want to tattoo your post on my arm or something.
As an English major, I particularly think that the hue and cry about how our generation's "classics" will be sifted out from all the digital dreck* out there is terribly ironic, since many of what we currently consider to be "The Classics" weren't discovered or appreciated until after the author's death, sometimes simply because the culture wasn't ready for it yet. So the answer is simple: Time will tell the good from the bad. Just as it always has.
* (And it MUST be all bad, right, because more quantity of self-published books must mean a dip in quality, right? Has anyone actually gathered any kind of actual data on this? I would think that, until proven otherwise, it would be just as valid to assume that the general quality would stay the same percentage as before when the gatekeepers were the publishing companies. The very
idea that publishing companies did a decent job sifting out quality is itself a symptom of literary Stockholm Syndrome, I think. But I digress.)