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Originally Posted by pwalker8
I would say that it's possible to overestimate if one's position is that _all_ authors require the support of a major publisher. On the flip side, it's a rare author who doesn't benefit from a competent editorial staff and a competent publicity campaign. Is it possible that some independents will step up and provide those services to authors? Sure, I fully expect they will. On the other hand, as is obvious by watching how the quality of various big name authors works degrade as they become major properties, many authors simply won't listen to editors if not forced to.
As far as publicity goes, I think that a book isn't going to be successful unless there is some level of publicity about it. The books that do well based purely on word of mouth are few and far between.
The final service that a publisher provides is a filter to remove the 80-90 percent of great American novels that are utter drek. This is the service that publishers provide the reading public.
Does that mean that publishers have to be mega-corporations? No, especially as ebooks and small print runs become more and more viable as a business model. But I think that it's fair to say that the model of throwing thousands of unedited books into a heap and letting the readers dig throw the pile to find books that they like isn't going to be a long term success.
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There are other options than only relying on BPHs pick books or just expecting readers to sort through thousands of books themselves. What about magazines that provide a brief synopsis and rating of books being published that month? Like Romantic Times, or Locus Magazine? They usually focus on particular genres and in those magazines there are particular reviewer whose tastes usually match mine. In each edition there are usually enough recommended books to fill my needs. Genre specific magazines and websites for books could easily fill that role of the publisher and since there could be a lot more of them than publishers readers could have more choice in finding ones whose tastes match their own.