Quote:
Originally Posted by Alisa
I think the noise-to-signal ratio is at the point where it can easily overwhelm these sorts of group ratings. The slush pile of bad writing is more than most people will sift through and just like marketeers manipulate Amazon reviews and Yelp ratings, they will game that system, too.
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Second that, people think that everything going digital makes it easier to self-promote but in reality it is harder unless you have some sort of extreme gimmick, how many people are video blogging youtube, now how many of them are you following daily. There is a flood of information available to people nowadays, there's probably 100,000 things that come out everyday that we have no idea of. If you don't have access to major news / information hubs you're going to fall through the cracks before you even get a chance to start.
Publishers still have a use and an important one because they have connections to get the word out to a mass audience which is still difficult. You can't google a new author if you've never heard of them and don't know that they are writing a book. The established players will be able to go independent more easily but in reality they probably wont want to deal with all of the hassle that's involved (opportunity cost of the amount of extra effort they need to put in vs what they will get from nixing the publishers probably isn't worth it, they could spend that time writing another book)