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

Re: Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Besides, if they would treat people decently, then people wouldn't be trying to flee in droves. If you look at small presses (or certain women's birthing clinics) they have a much nicer atmosphere because some of them are started by people who count a congenial workplace among their goals. They've had bad experiences with places that treated them like garbage, and they don't want to do that to anyone else ... and they're betting that other folks will be attracted to that model.