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However, not everyone at the conference thought that self-published missives were good for the market. Andrew Franklin, managing editor of Profile Books, said the vast majority of them were “unutterable rubbish”.
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My own 1st thought was to wonder how many of the books that a traditional publisher chooses to market do well as opposed to those that sink with nary a ripple. Granted the traditional publisher has editors who do screen out some of the muck that is unpublishable, but even then some percentage of what they think will be a hit with the reading public is going to be perceived as junk by that public. You can have two different authors submit books using the same theme to the same publisher and one may be accepted and published only to sink quickly while the other (having been rejected) goes onto another publisher who sees its potential and it is published to rave acclaim. Or maybe the 1st makes the big splash and the 2nd sinks. Or both sink. There is no way for anyone to know for sure which book is truly just rubbish and which is the next big seller. The publisher may make an educated guess based on experience, but even he/she can't be completely sure what will happen. I imagine there are those who think that anything labeled "popular fiction" as opposed to literary fiction must be rubbish too. They often forget that what is now classic fiction or called literary fiction by colleges and universities today started out as popular fiction.