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I head up the editorial team at a small indie publishing house and must reject hundreds of novel submissions each year because ... well ... because they're tripe. It's depressing to see so many of these titles pop up now as self-published ebook and PoD of the raw ms with all the flaws firmly and arrogantly intact.
There are self-published gems out there -- some self-pubbed in frustration with continual rejection, others to deliberately bypass the mainstream -- but the majority are not worth the reading time. That's a crying shame for those fine self-publishing authors whose quality work is swamped and tarred with the same brush.
Acquisition editors are the readers' filter system. Mistakes are made, of course with some good stuff being overlooked and some bad stuff being pushed as wonderful, but at least there is some quality control, even though professional editorial selection ain't by any means an exact science. By it's very nature, self-publication avoids all independent quality control and professional editorial intervention. Many self-pubs seem even to have avoided basic proof reading.
It's tough because the market (especially the direct-to-ebook market) is becoming top heavy with self-published work and it's so hit and miss, so suck-it-and-see, that you can waste a heck of a lot of precious time and money before finding something worth the read.
Cheers. Neil
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