[MartinParish]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

As someone who's read the infamous slush pile (and seen excerpts from PublishAmerica books, and worked at a POD publishing service) I firmly believe in the importance of publishers as both gatekeepers and facilitators.

Truth is, there really is a ton of unreadable dreck out there and you need someone to go through it. I prefer books that have been vetted by commercial publishers because that does usually mean the book meets a minimum standard of spelling and grammar. It may still be dreck, but at least I know it's written in readable English.

Publishers also serve as facilitators, getting bookstore placement and promotion in the trade press.

I think they're vital to the health of the industry.

It's unquestionably true that there's a lot of rubbish out there that's not worth a second look - and writers are exceptionally good at persuading ourselves we've written something worth reading(even when we haven't). But if publishers' primary role is to serve as gatekeepers then they are obsolete and it will quickly become apparent. The fact is that no one needs gatekeepers.

To see why, let's think a moment here about other kinds of content on the Internet. I'd be prepared to bet that any time you do a search on Google, well over 90% of the hits you retrieve are worthless. Even if they weren't, how would you ever find time to read through all of them? So clearly the junk to gems ratio on the Internet is extremely high - and yet no one wants or needs Internet gatekeepers, because we can decide what links we follow for ourselves. The same is true for books. Ultimately, the free market is perfectly able to decide what is and is not a good book without a gatekeeper to make that decision for us.

I think that publishers served a vital role as facilitators in the past and continue to do so at present; whether they will continue to do so in the future- or whether they can even remain viable - is far from clear. As gatekeepers, however, they serve no useful purpose. Of course the quality of books from publishers is higher on average than independent books, because the publishers filter out much of the slush. But the free market doesn't really need a gatekeeper, and if the publishing industry ever reaches the point where its sole function is to act as such, it will become history.