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Originally Posted by cfFairy
Fair enough. New question then; I've talked to some fellow writers (published writers) and they seem pretty against the whole self-publishing idea. It's better to go through an agent or manager or whatever. I have to admit though, none of them clarified why it's better to go with the agent route. Is self publishing just not a good way to go or is it a good way to get started? Any opinions or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
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It's elitism.
Previously, very few people had the means to publish their book by themselves and get it out into the world. You had to be selected by a publisher, who would then handle almost everything, except the actual writing (which would have been done already, obviously).
So, getting published meant to be good enough (in the eyes of the agent/publisher) to be selected and printed. It bequeathed a certain status to be published.
Now, anyone can write whatever they want, and have their ebook created automatically by their writing software. Scrivener comes to mind, as do some plugins for Word and LibreOffice. If one has the knowledge, there are also programs to tweak the layout of the book after creation, such as Sigil and Calibre's ebook editor.
Will the self-published book be good, and look professional? Possibly, yes. Possibly, no. It depends on the writer, if he/she has the knowlege to make it so, or if he/she doesn't have it, hire people to make a professional ebook for them. Those people don't care about your story; they only make the layout look good and work correctly most devices.
Upload the book to Smashwords or another site that can sell it, or your own site if need be, and you're published. Nobody will stop you, and nobody says that you can't publish this or that because the quality is not good enough.
Thus, 'being published' has lost a lot of its status, and the traditionally published writers resent that.