Quote:
Originally Posted by abookreader
But they are. If they take a broad selection of submissions, filter them, and then offer a selection up as their recommendations then they are acting as literary gatekeepers.
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That's curation, not gatekeeping. Everything that comes into their hands has already passed the gatekeepers and is 'in the yard,' to stretch the metaphor. Of course, these days a lot of work never encounters a gatekeeper at all, hence some writers' despair over the glut of work on the market. All it takes to enter the market now is to cobble together an ebook and hit "upload," whereas not so long ago self-publishing and even small-press publishing were a joke, and inherently limited your audience to the number of DTBs you could afford to print. Now, setting up a PayPal checkout and hosting your own work is trivial, and bribing booksellers and going on morning shows are arguably less effective than amassing followers on Twitter.