Well, considering the industry, it's not entirely unwarranted. There is quite an amazing lot of self-published crap out there. Just like there's an amazingly lot of crap music, crap comics, crap art. The only difference is, publishing crap books hasn't got the street cred that 'zines do (or at least, did in the '80s.
Add to that that it's much harder to get writing out there. Art has a long tradition of self-production. Music and comics are very easy to publish on the web. A lot of new comics start out as webcomics, and only go hard-copy when there's a sufficient readerbase; and the distro channel for music is huge, what with the number of iPods and other music players.
Unfortunately, until the e-reader market grows considerably, that won't be true for writing. On top of that, reading books is steadily losing popularity, and has been for a while.
And if that's not bad enough, there are a huge number of self-publishing scams out there; and even the legit channels are bloody expensive compared to art, music, or comics.
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zvi and
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Date: 2008-11-19 06:01 am (UTC)Add to that that it's much harder to get writing out there. Art has a long tradition of self-production. Music and comics are very easy to publish on the web. A lot of new comics start out as webcomics, and only go hard-copy when there's a sufficient readerbase; and the distro channel for music is huge, what with the number of iPods and other music players.
Unfortunately, until the e-reader market grows considerably, that won't be true for writing. On top of that, reading books is steadily losing popularity, and has been for a while.
And if that's not bad enough, there are a huge number of self-publishing scams out there; and even the legit channels are bloody expensive compared to art, music, or comics.