Quote:
Originally Posted by sun surfer
Not that there isn't loads and loads of rubbish in self-publishing. But it is democratising publishing and allowing less easily pigeonholed authors to be heard, and one can easily ignore self-published works if one wants. I rarely look at self published works unless it comes highly recommended, so I don't feel my choices, selection and percent of quality literature that I peruse today are any different than 10 or 20 years ago.
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But I would argue that market forces are doing precisely the opposite. By destroying the small publishers and enslaving everything to market forces. Amazons only criteria is that you sell. In order for unique voices to be heard it always required unique publishers with taste who were wiling to raise that author on a platform for all to see no matter the risk. Now its harder to educate people and fight through the noise to see the great.
For instance, an innocent peruser of the Amazon library may come across an edition of 'Moan for Bigfoot' by Virginia Wade, and find their choice validated by the like minded. And amazon will happily take your money. So will Virginia Wade for that matter. Of course Virginia wouldn't exist without Amazon and Bigfoot would never have crawled out of the forest without such support.