Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
One of the most valuable services that publishers offer is to act as a crap filter. If I buy a book from, say, Baen, I can be pretty confident that it will be properly edited, written to a good standard, and that I will enjoy it. With independently published books, the overwhelming majority are - well - crap. I really don't want to have to spend the time finding the tiny number of gems among the garbage. I'd prefer to let a publisher do that for me.
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That's a good point. While I've read innumerable amounts of absolutely horrendous fiction released by big publishers the quality still tends to be more consistent. It's also probably the reason why I'm still more than willing to pay $10 for an ebook published by them. That sum is identical to what it costs to buy a pocket book here in sweden.
It isn't something that necessitates the use of publishers however, as seen on various app stores and imdb/rotten tomatoes/etc. Customer reviews (averages and medians) make the gems float to the top, while the bad ones get buried in the noise. Only going by what is commercially most successful, even on such top ten lists, results in a rather bland experience but it fulfills the need nicely.