I get a kick out of people trying to exclude "already successful authors" from discussions about self-publishing (or better yet, excluding the self-pubbers that went on to get tradpub deals). It's probably because it doesn't slot in nicely with their preconceived notion that all self-published stuff is garbage. Reminds me of mainstream literature cherry-picking all the bright and shiny stuff from the ranks of genre fiction and then poo-pooing genre fiction as garbage.
"When I say 'self-published stuff is all garbage', I don't mean the good self-published stuff, I'm only talking about the garbage self-published stuff being garbage."
