[ApK]

This subject has been discussed quite a bit, but most of the threads on it here are several years old, and I figure it's worth an update.

One of the ostensible value-adds that the traditional Big Publishing Houses offer consumers is acting as Gatekeepers, selecting properties with some level of merit or quality, and thereby preventing us from being buried in dreck.

For the sake of this thread, let's consider only basic editorial and grammatical gatekeeping.
That is, let's set aside for the moment the ideas of content censorship, or political biases, or "they turned down Hemingway 9 times..." and just talk about the basic function of sending rejection letters to people who can't construct a coherent sentence in the language they chose to write in.

Even in this limited context, the BPHs are imperfect, true, but compared to what's up for sale on a platform like KDP, they are the Gold Standard. Mistakes get through, but if a BPH expects to maintain a reputation and stay in business, they do at least tend to show that their staff has basic literacy skills.

So much of the stuff on KDP is illegible, incoherent garbage, which, if the ideas of the content it self are worth sharing at all, should have been ghost written by someone else. Someone who can write.

It seems to be a fact that reviews and ratings can't be trusted.
The platforms themselves cannot (and should not) try to exercise the Gate-keeping function on their own.

The only decent tools available to us would seem to be reading the free samples (which, on a bad day, can have you spending A LOT of time reading a lot of REALLY BAD samples, and still not finding anything decent...the volume of dreck is that great) or getting recommendations from specific people who's taste and judgment you trust.

Personally, I would like to see the population of the world develop some self-restraint and a less entitled attitude, and refrain from publishing stuff if they have absolutely no writing ability, but I'm not sure how to bring that about.
I mean, I can't sing, so I don't try to get people to spend their time listening to me sing*. I'd appreciate it if other people were similarly aware of their limitations.

Is that the way it's going to be from now to the foreseeable future? Have I missed anything?
Is this a good situation?


ApK

* (except at my guitar jam, where they force me into it....)