Self-Publishing Poll

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

ysabetwordsmith pointed out this poll on self-publishing, which I visited briefly. After reading a handful of the comments, I was struck by their violence: there's a lot of emotion there in the people denouncing the practice of self-publishing. ysabetwordsmith said about that: "Any instance of extreme hostility raises the question of why people are being so violent about it."

I think that's a good question. Why do you think some of the people opposed to self-publishing are so hostile about it?


Edit: Please note, I'm not really interested in debating the profitability of the publishing industry. What I'm trying to understand, primarily, is why there's so much vitriol leveled by writers and readers at self-published authors (as in one of the commenters who said of self-published authors that they can "call themselves authors" but they never will be real ones). This kind of extreme behavior strikes me a strange. Particular coming from writers to other writers. And readers—that makes no sense at all. If they don't want to read self-published work, they can just... not read it. Why the anger?

Comments

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

It seems to be the general consensus that self-publishing means one or two gems amongst a million badly written and unedited books.

Of course, the fact that seems to escape these people is that "real" publishing means one or two gems amongst a million badly written and unedited (or underedited) books TOO. Because even established authors can write turkeys (especially if they achieve high-income author status and start getting shirty about being edited), and even "real" editors can pick out howling turkeys, or just horrendously mediocre work.

[celestinenox]

All true. Which is why I say later on: "And we all know that skills and money don't necessarily make a successful book anyway." Established publishing doesn't always pick winners, that's a known fact.