Assassins and Liars is now available as an audiobook.

If you enjoyed reading about Finn and Mary in Assassins and Liars, you'll get an extra kick from listening to the audiobook. Narrated and produced by David Bosco, it's available now. To download your copy or to listen to a sample from Audible.com, CLICK HERE.

This is my first experience with publishing an audiobook, and I'm excited by the way David Bosco brings Finn and Mary to life. David is a storyteller in his own right, and he does more than just read the manuscript. His performance has given me a different perspective on the book, even though I wrote it.

I'm putting the finishing touches on the first draft of Sailors and Sirens, the fourth book in the Finn series. As I write the dialog, I find myself hearing Finn and Mary as David rendered them in Assassins and Liars. That's a real treat for me, and a tribute to his ability to give them unique voices. Working with him on Assassins and Liars was a blast.

Even if you're not a fan of audiobooks, click through to the book's page on Audible.com and listen to the sample. The audio version of Assassins and Liars is available on Amazon and iTunes, as well, but Audible has some subscription offers that might appeal.

Meanwhile, I'm working with David on an audio version of Avengers and Rogues, the second book in the series. The audio version of Avengers and Rogues will be released in July. Sailors and Sirens, the fourth book in the series, will be available for preorder as an ebook in June.

Paid by the book or paid by the page -- which is better?

I've read a lot of articles over the last few weeks that explored this question. Now it's possible to answer it definitively, at least from my personal perspective. Until Amazon announced what they would pay per page for the month of July, writers could only speculate, and speculation and suspicion were everywhere. Now we have some firm data.

Most of us recognized that the effect of this new scheme by Amazon would vary from writer to writer, depending on the kind of books we published. It was clear early on that the writers who had been gaming the system by writing very short books with sensational titles and covers would suffer. Under the old scheme, if a reader borrowed a "book" of ten pages and spent a few minutes reading only the first page or two, the author got paid roughly $1.30. If a reader borrowed a best-selling, can't-put-it-down, 450 page novel and read it cover to cover over the course of ten days, the author got paid the same $1.30.

That has changed. In July, the author of the ten-page book that held the reader's interest for two pages earned 1.2 cents, and the author who wrote the 450 page page-turner earned $2.60. Is that good, or is it bad?

The answer depends on who you ask. From Amazon's perspective, it's most likely good. A reader who paid $9.99 per month for Kindle Unlimited and "read" 100 of those 10 page books cost Amazon $130 under the old system. Under the new system, even if the borrower reads 100 of the ten-page books cover to cover, Amazon's cost is under $6.00. The other borrower, the one who read the 450 page novel in ten days, might have read three of them during the month. That would have cost Amazon $3.90 under the old scheme. Under the new scheme, that borrower cost Amazon $7.80, but they still made money on the longer book.

There was speculation that authors of those short books would remove their books from Kindle Unlimited. Amazon won't suffer from that. The people who were reading those ten-page books may have to pay more for them, and they may leave Kindle Unlimited. That won't hurt Amazon, either. Amazon was losing money on those people -- both the borrowers and the authors.

There was speculation that if those borrowers of many short books dropped out of the program, the Kindle Unlimited pot that got divided among the remaining authors would be smaller. That may be the case, but the remaining authors are now making roughly twice as much per book borrowed.

I'm one of those authors, and I would gladly accept some erosion of the payout for borrows as a result of people who don't read my books dropping out of the program. Until half of the participants drop out, I'll be earning more money than I did under the old system.

In July, I made about the same amount of money on a borrowed book as I did on an outright purchase of the same book. I like that, but what about Amazon? Does that make sense to them?

Let's go back to that person who borrowed and read three 450 page books in July. She paid Amazon $9.99, and she cost them $7.80 in payments to the authors. Amazon made $2.19 on those three books that were borrowed. If those books had sold for $3.99, Amazon would have made $3.60 instead of $2.19.

Only Amazon can determine whether the tradeoff between a borrow and a sale makes sense. Remember that I assumed the borrower would read three books during the month. If the borrower borrows only one 450 page book, Amazon makes $9.99 - $2.60, or $7.39 from that borrower.

Keeping in mind that the author makes about the same amount either way under the new system, Amazon is probably better off, especially since they've eliminated those 'books' and borrowers that were costing Amazon over ten times what they paid Amazon.

There are some other effects on authors that may be less obvious. We all want our books to rank well in the Kindle Store. That increases our visibility and our sales. Those short books with their seductive titles and covers that got borrowed heavily probably distorted the rankings. They took up virtual shelf space, and if some of them were in fact of little value to the reader, they may have poisoned the well for the rest of us.

In case you haven't guessed by now, I like Kindle Unlimited. Under the old plan, I think I suffered a slight decrease in outright sales, but I picked up a lot of new readers through borrows.  Borrows are a low risk way for a reader to sample a new author, so my income from Kindle Select went up significantly even at the lower payout per borrow. Under the new system, I've seen an increase in my total revenue from Kindle Select of roughly 20 percent on the same equivalent unit volume.

I'm interested in your reactions, now that we have some real numbers.

Posted with Blogsy

Kindle Unlimited: Good or Bad for Indie Authors?

There has been some grumbling lately among my Indie compatriots about the decrease in Kindle book sales caused by the advent of Kindle Unlimited.  Having made the decision long ago to go Kindle Select with 13 of my 14 titles, I've watched the effect on my sales and income with considerable interest.  The conclusions I've drawn are at odds with most of what I've read recently, so I thought I'd share my observations.

First, to clear the air on my biases:

I'm an independent, self-published author.  I derive a substantial portion of my income from sales of my books.  Most of that comes from ebooks.  All of my ebook revenue comes from Amazon, because I made a business decision to focus on them as my channel to market.

I haven't always been an author; I published my first book late in 2010.  I have a lot of respect for Amazon as a business.  From my own experience in the corporate environment, I think that no outsider, and that includes the 'investment professionals' and 'industry experts,' is in a position to second-guess Amazon's business decisions.

I think it's safe to discount all of the speculation in the press about what Amazon's doing and why and focus on things closer to home.  Amazon is neither good or evil from my perspective.  They do what is best for them, balancing the interests of suppliers (writers among them), customers, and investors to further their own interests.  We can agree or disagree with what they do, but if we want to sell books, we need to deal with them.

What about Kindle Unlimited?

When Amazon introduced Kindle Unlimited in the U.S. store in July, I saw an immediate increase in the number of borrowed books over the level I was accustomed to from Amazon Prime borrows.  The percentage of my total paid units borrowed went from an average of 5.5 percent to about 14 percent in July.  In August, it jumped to about 24 percent.  The program started in mid July, so that makes sense.  My percentage borrowed has averaged about 25 percent for the last half of 2014.

My first reaction was that borrows were cannibalizing sales, so now that I have several months of data, I've done a little analysis.  I've used some standard analytical tools to normalize the data for the first half and the second half of 2014.  I normalized the numbers to remove the effect that adding new books to the mix had on my total numbers.  Don't get stuck on the math, but if you changed your offerings during the year, it's necessary to wash out the effects of adding or deleting books before you start making comparisons.

In my case, the increase in volume as a result of more borrows has more than offset the effect of price erosion from Kindle Unlimited.  My average revenue per unit dropped by about 9 percent, but my number of paid units in the second half was 35 percent higher than the first half.  The surprise is that my revenue for the second half was 46 percent higher than for the first half.  Borrows increase rankings and make your book more visible, as well as making it less risky to people who don't know your work.

I'm relatively new at this and still building recognition among readers.  Someone with a much bigger base of fans might see different results, but I'm much happier with Kindle Unlimited than I was with the notion of giveaways to build a base of readers.

 Let's hear your thoughts on Kindle Unlimited, whether from the perspective of a writer or a reader.

One, two, three … nine books … thoughts on writing a series.

In March of 2012, as I was finishing the second book in my Bluewater Thriller series, I wrote a blog post about my experience.  By now, I’ve written seven books in that series, and I just released the second book in a second, related series.  Sailor’s Delight - a Connie Barrera Thriller is available now in the Kindle Store.  I thought it might be time to revisit the question of writing another series.

At least it’s sort of another series. In some ways, it’s more of a fork in the road of the first series. Connie Barrera played a major role in my first novel, Deception in Savannah. That was before I was even committed to this notion of writing full-time, let alone writing a series. We got to know one another then, but it was only after I was well into the Bluewater series that I saw Connie’s potential. I decided to feature her in Bluewater Ice, the fourth Bluewater book, as a guest on the charter yacht, Vengeance.

She played so well with Dani and Liz that we collectively decided that she should stay for another book, Bluewater Betrayal. After that, though, two things happened. Dani and Liz were getting tired of sharing the spotlight with this dark-haired interloper, even though they were fond of her. That could have been sticky, but Connie solved the problem when she decided she wanted her own boat.

Her own story as a charter captain began in Love for Sail and continues in Sailor’s Delight. While she was hanging out with Dani and Liz, she met a friend of theirs named Paul Russo. Paul had just retired from his position as the head of the Miami P. D. homicide department. He had two compelling interests which caught Connie’s attention – sailing and gourmet cooking. Thanks to Dani and Liz, Connie had become a fine sailor, but she had no aptitude for cooking. She knew that if she wanted to run a successful charter yacht, she needed a first-rate chef.

Being the opportunist that she is, Connie persuaded Paul to join her as crew on Diamantista, and the Connie Barrera Thrillers got their start. During their first adventure in Love for Sail, she and Paul managed to survive an encounter with drug smugglers. In the process, they discovered that they shared a love for more than just sailing. Committed to being partners in life as well as business, they decided to sell Diamantista, get married, and buy another, more suitable yacht together.

In Sailor’s Delight, they’re waiting on delivery of the new boat and planning their wedding when their second set of charter guests arrives. They’re also wrestling with problems in their relationship that are exacerbated when their guests’ teenaged daughter is kidnapped by human traffickers. Paul and Connie don’t agree on the best way to recover the girl, and there’s some doubt as to whether either their romance or the missing girl will survive.

I’m having fun with this second series, because I can bring in some of the more interesting secondary characters from the Bluewater series and add more depth to them. That’s how Connie got to where she is, so she’s willing to help. Once her series is well-established, it could be that Sharktooth, or Phillip Davis, or Marie Lacroix will want the chance to tell tales of their own.

It’s great fun to work with this expanding group of characters who all know one another. That’s an unforeseen benefit of having a second series branch off from a well-established one. Speaking of the well-established one, I hear Dani and Liz grumbling. It’s time to get to work on the eighth Bluewater Thriller now.

Are Kindle Countdown Sales Worthwhile?

Last Thursday, I ran a Kindle Countdown Sale to promote Bluewater Killer, the first book in my Bluewater Thriller series.  Besides scheduling my own Tweets and requesting Twitter support from fellow writers, I sponsored Kindle Nation Daily's Kindle Daily Deal newsletter.  Kindle Nation Daily featured my book at the top of their mailing and their web page for the day.  

The book's regular price is $2.99. On the first day, when the book was priced at 99¢, I sold thirteen times my average daily unit volume for that title.   That was the day that the paid ad ran.  The book was ranked at about 65,000 in the Kindle Store the morning before the promotion.  Over the last few months, it has frequently been ranked in the 30,000 to 40,000 range.  Bluewater Killer has often been in the top 100 on the Action /  Adventure / Sea Adventure list.  On the first day of the promotion, the ranking peaked at about 4,000 in the Kindle Store, and it reached number 7 on the Sea Adventure list.  

The second day, when the price was $1.99, the only promotion was on Twitter.  Sales for the second day were minuscule -- one half of the long term average daily rate, and the book began a slow decline in ratings.  As of Sunday, it's ranked around 25,000 in the Kindle Store and around 50 on the Sea Adventures list.  Daily sales now are about average.   

The increase in total royalties for the first day offset a substantial portion of the cost of the paid advertisement.  Because I haven't used Kindle Nation Daily before, at least some of the purchasers are probably new to my work.  I also think that someone who buys a book, even for 99¢, is more likely to read it than someone who picked it up for free.  If 10 percent of the people who bought Bluewater Killer for 99¢ go on to read the rest of the books in the series, I'll more than recover the cost of the ad.  I didn't see any significant change in the sales of my other titles during this promotion.

I don't think that the countdown sale provided any benefit over previous straight 99¢ sales that I've done, but I did see a dramatic boost from the paid advertisement.  Without paid advertising, 99¢ sales haven't increased unit quantities enough to offset my lost royalties from the lower price.  In this case total royalties for the title were slightly higher than my daily average.  With no loss in royalties during the sale, my only expense was for the ad.  I think the paid promotion was worth doing.  It didn't change my short term income, but it probably expanded my base of readers a bit.  I'll continue to use paid advertising as part of my marketing mix in the future, but I'm leaning toward heavily promoted, single day 99¢ sales as opposed to countdown sales.

I hope this is useful to other independent authors.  Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome.  What's your opinion, either as a writer or a book buyer?

How to Sell More Books, or Even a Blind Hog Finds an Acorn Once in a While

Women's Fiction Adventure
in the Kindle Store yesterday

In the same way that a blind hog occasionally finds an acorn, I think I’ve found a better way to promote my books. For the last year, I’ve spent less time on promotion, and my sales have increased. So what did I do, and how am I spending the time that I once invested in promotion?

There have been countless books and blog posts written offering advice to self-published authors on how to market their books. There are endless schemes for ‘building a platform,’ using social media, and gaming Amazon’s ranking system. People spend hundreds of dollars on advertising to give their books away for free in the hope of building a base of readers or to sell them for 99 cents to improve their sales rank.

All of these ideas have some merit. I’ve tried most of them, and they work, up to a point. The problem is that they don’t usually produce long-term results. Watch what happens to the books that are given away repeatedly; follow their sales ranking over time. You’ll discover that not many sustain their sales rankings for more than a few days after a giveaway. The same is true to a lesser extent with the 99 cent sales. With carefully coordinated promotion, it’s possible to stretch the results over a longer period, but it takes a lot of time and effort.

So what about that acorn?  How am I spending the time that I used to invest in promotion?  I'm spending it writing more books.  I realized over the last year that the most effective way to boost my sales for the long term was to release a new title.   The results were masked at first, because I had so many other promotional things happening, but I noticed it accidentally when I released the fourth book in my Bluewater Thriller series last May.

I released the book, and a few days later, Leslie and I went sailing for a couple of weeks. With no Internet access, I wasn’t around to tweet and make noise on Facebook, or blog, or do any of those other things that we all do. After we came to rest in Antigua, I went online and was stunned by the sales numbers. While I was away, my daily sales had ramped up by a factor of 15 during the two-week period after the release. That’s a 1,500 percent increase, and all I did was release the book and schedule a few tweets announcing it.

The most interesting part of that to me was that while the new release racked up some nice numbers, it was surpassed by the increased sales of the first book in the series. The new book attracted attention, but people who had not read the series clearly went back to the first book and started there. Overall sales declined gradually over the next several months, but I could see the ripple in increased sales roll through the series from title to title.

I released the next book in the fall of last year, and I got another boost. I’ve seen the same sort of result with the release last month of Bluewater Stalker. The results from the last two releases weren’t as dramatic, but the base numbers are higher now. My same-month sales year-over-year have increased a few hundred percent on an average basis.

The release of each new book in the series also boosted of the sales of the titles that aren’t part of the series, which at first was counter-intuitive for me. Lately, I’ve gotten emails from readers who volunteered that while they were waiting for the next book in the series, they decided to try some of my other books.

So if you don’t see me as often on Facebook and Twitter, you’ll know it’s because I’m implementing a new, two-part marketing strategy. It’s a simple plan. First, to sell more books, I’ll write more Bluewater Thrillers. Second, I’ll write another series that is related to but slightly different from the Bluewater Thrillers. The thing I like most about the plan is that my favorite part of this whole business is the writing.

Thanks for visiting; I have to get back to Connie Barrera and Love for Sail. She’s just overcome the first big obstacle in her new role as the skipper of Diamantista, and she’s trying to sort out her feelings about this guy who’s going to become her crew in the Virgin Islands. She’s already pestering me about her second book, too, but  her second book won't happen until after the seventh Bluewater Thriller. I’ve promised that next slot to the Bluewater ladies after I release Love for Sail.

Changing Channels

With some trepidation, I've decided to sell my books in eBook format through Amazon only.  There are several reasons behind my decision, but the most compelling is that, as a self-published author, I find it much easier to work with Amazon than with their competitors.  Given their size and market position, that's surprising to me, but they got to where they are by offering superb customer service, along with their keen marketing skills.  That superb customer service carries over into their dealings with self-published authors, even people like me.  I account for an insignificant amount of their eBook business, but I still find them far more responsive than their competitors.

Over 90% of my sales have been through Amazon, both for eBooks and paperbacks.  Most of the rest of my eBook sales have come from Barnes & Noble, and it's clear that they aren't committed to independent authors.  I'm not even sure they're committed to eBooks.  It's not that I don't value the sales through Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Smashwords, and the others.  I'm still at the stage where every book counts.  Aside from the customer service issue, having the books in other channels adds significant complexity to pricing and price changes, and makes it impossible for me to take advantage of Amazon's Kindle Select program.  I still haven't decided whether I want to do that, but, by pulling my eBooks from the other channels, I have that option at my fingertips.  I like the idea of being able to offer free promotional copies in the Kindle store, and the option of being able to change prices without weeks of advance planning.  I'd rather spend my time working on the next book.

I'm an avid reader of eBooks, as is my wife, and we've both found that over the past year, all of our eBooks have come from the Kindle store.  Interestingly, neither of us owns nor wants a Kindle; we use the Kindle app on iPod Touches.  We spend virtually all of our time outside the U.S., and our interactions with Amazon are seamless: no matter where we are, we have full access to the Kindle store and our library.  That's not so with Barnes & Noble.  Even though we have a U.S. account, paid with U.S. credit cards, we can't buy eBooks from outside the U.S.  They've told us it's an issue of territory rights with the publishers, and it may be, in their view, but I'm a publisher, and they have had the right to distribute my eBooks globally for the last year, but they chose not to.  So, I'm moving on.

If you came to read this because you wanted to buy one of my eBooks from somewhere besides Amazon, please let me know via a comment here.  I'll do my best to accommodate you.  Readers are important to me.

If you are a fellow writer, I’d welcome your comments and opinions as well. 

Thanks for visiting.

Let's remove the Stigma attached to Indie Authors.

Almost every day, I see an article online about the need for editing in self-published works.  Not quite as often, but still frequently, I see counterarguments about the declining quality of professionally edited, traditionally published works.  I agree with both of these positions.  The solution that is most often offered is that Indie authors need to hire editors.  That doesn't address the problem of declining quality among the editorial ranks.  Good editors, like good writers, are hard to find.  Encouraging a poor writer to hire a questionable editor may not remove the stigma.

So, what's the solution?  It's multifaceted, but it's not complicated. As a first step, I think Indie authors need to cultivate critical readers and listen to their feedback.  When you find such gems, don't give them the book until you are certain it's ready to publish.  Ask for comments on the story structure, the ease of reading, and the pacing.  Try to get the reader to zero in on specific examples to illustrate any criticism, but don't expect that they will point to the precise problem.  These folks are hard to find, but they're there.  If you're depending on a relative,  be sure to explain that the purpose of their feedback is to keep you from embarrassing yourself in public, not to make you feel good right now.  Although my wife is fond of me and likes to say nice things to me, she won't let me go out on the town with my shirt on inside out.  I've tried it.  There are some others who help me, as well, and when some or all of them tell me that there's something wrong, I know there's something wrong.  They may all point at different things, but that doesn't matter.  It's my job to find the specific problems and fix them.    

As a second step, if grammar and punctuation get in the way of the story, the writer (or editor, in some cases) needs to go back to school or find a different outlet for creative urges.  An editor should be correcting oversights and mistakes, not picking through the fruits of ignorance.  There is a difference between an editor and a ghost writer.  Let's not confuse the two.

The third step, and the one that all of us who are serious about removing the stigma attached to Indie authors should embrace, is to give honest, direct feedback, as opposed to "I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine" reviews.  That's best done with some degree of privacy, as opposed to posting a critique for the world to see.  If you read a lot of Indie books, as I do, you've encountered some that have egregious errors in the first few pages.  Take a minute to write to the author and suggest that, while the story might be interesting, it's obscured by the poor grammar and punctuation.  Don't give it 3, 4, or 5 stars and hope for the same in return.  That's where the stigma comes from.

Is there a place for paid editors, cover designers, and blurb writers in this world?  Certainly, there is.  The good ones earn their money, as do good writers, and their work stands out for the same reasons.  Let's all focus on the quality of our collective product, and the stigma will go away. 

Facebook and Twitter: The Social Marketing Maze

I've enjoyed a brief respite from my writing regimen as we move the boat north from Grenada to St. Martin.  We've had some great sailing, and I've had a bit of time to think about Bluewater Vengeance, my current project.  When we have had the luxury of Internet access in our occasional anchorages, I've spent some fragmented time trying to work my way through the social marketing maze.  While I write for the pure pleasure of it, it adds to the satisfaction to have people read my work, so I'm looking for ways to expand my audience. 

Every time I think I understand how Facebook works, it starts behaving differently.  I use it to stay in touch with friends and family, anyhow, so I don't really want to bombard them with promotional messages about my books.  I figure they know about the books, and the folks who are interested have bought them or will buy them in their own good time.  There's a small universe of potential readers there, and it's not expanding rapidly.  In an effort to separate my personal Facebook activity from selling books, I've set up fan pages, one for each book, and one for myself.  The challenge now is to get some exposure for those pages, but I'm expecting that will come slowly, from links in the eBooks themselves. 

I've invested some time in Twitter over the past few weeks.  To me, it appears much more commercially oriented, and I'm less reluctant to keep pumping advertising Tweets out.  It's interesting to see how many of my fellow writers are doing the same.  There are also some useful links that pop up on Twitter from time to time.  I've learned a good bit since I've been watching, and Twitter allows me to share what I've learned with folks who have interests similar to mine. 

I've discovered that I can generate traffic to my links using Twitter, as well.  Traffic on this blog has increased from around 100 visits per month to around 600 in the last 3 weeks, and it's still growing.  So far, I can't see a corresponding increase in downloads of my books, but visibility is the first step.  Now that I know people actually follow the links in my Tweets, I've begun to direct some traffic straight to links for the online bookstores.  That gives interested folks a shorter path to reading the book.  If they stop here first, they have to decide which online store to visit.  I'm not sure which is preferable to potential readers, so I'm experimenting with a mix to see what happens. 

Once we settle in our favorite St. Martin anchorage in a few days, I'll get back to the pleasure of writing Bluewater Vengeance, and watch what happens to my social marketing experiments.   

Self-Publishing and Quality

There's been a lot of press lately about the impact of self-publishing on the traditional publishing industry, and there's been some commentary on the quality of self-published material.  Some of the comments, particularly those that originate with those involved in the traditional publishing industry, are damning.  As an avid reader for nearly 60 years, a person who has made a good living by depending on the written word to convey complex information, and, recently, a self-published author, I have to join the fray.

In my opinion, the quality of recent publications in general has declined, regardless of medium.  I think that this is a result of a decline in the quality of primary and secondary education, as well as the impact of the broadcast media.  People who should know better now speak television-quality English.  Then, those who would write without first acquiring a solid foundation in grammar and usage begin to promulgate what they hear by writing it down.

One of the most common and grating results of this is the struggle for life of the objective case of the first person personal pronoun.  You know the one I mean, don't you?  The perfectly good, grammatically correct use of the word "me" is being systematically trampled by the pseudo literate, including many of those who edit traditionally published material.  Nothing annoys me and other careful writers more than to see the beginning of this sentence become "other careful writers and I."  I offer that as an example; investigation and proof are left to the reader.

Some make the argument that English is a living language, and that it needs to change with the times.  I'm certain that it's living; I hear it scream every time somebody tortures it to make it change its behavior to accommodate laziness on the part of a would-be writer or editor.  Change should be for improvement; not because of carelessness or ignorance.  The results of reducing our language to its lowest form are sometimes comical, sometimes pitiful, but they rarely convey the writer's precise meaning.  No matter how emphatic and engaging such works may be, carefully parsing what was written often yields ambiguous results.  That's unfortunate, because written English offers the writer a degree of precision that is difficult to achieve in other forms of communication.

What does this have to do with self-published works versus traditionally published works?  I have developed a preference for self-published authors over the last couple of years, for a couple of reasons.  The biggest one for me is the breadth of material that's self published.  There is something for every taste, for every mood.  Nobody screens out works that don't have enough market appeal.  Writers are free to write about what interests them without worrying about catching the attention of an agent.  Does this mean that there is a lot of poorly written material available?  It certainly does.  Do you have to read it?  No.  You can download and read a substantial sample and decide for yourself whether to buy the work and invest your time in it.  If the writing is atrocious, it only takes a few seconds to delete the offending file and move on.  There are a lot of gems to be found in the swill, for those who take the time to look.  The gems are often works that wouldn't make it through the screen of the traditional publishing industry, not because they are poorly written, but just because they have different characteristics than those that have sold well in the past.

I don't believe the traditional publishing industry is evil or nefarious in its selection process.  I believe the industry is using a business model that has worked well for commodity products in the past, but which penalizes writers who don't already have a following.  That's not bad; it's good business, if you are a traditional publisher.  They want to publish what will sell.  The weakness in this business model is that it discourages innovation.  When an innovative writer comes long and builds a following, the publishing industry is there to help, except that at that point, their added value is purely in warehousing and distribution.

Attempting to justify their existence as gatekeepers for quality is a losing proposition.  It didn't work for any of the recently dismantled monopolies, and it won't work in this market, either.  What do you think?