Doubtless legions of cyber adepts would laugh at my clumsy neophyte discovery, but I have only just found this latest opportunity to stalk and be stalked (with a particular literary focus).
There’s a lot of reasons to self-publish. Stephen Leather maintains an entire blog on the topic, with a particularly interesting post from February this year (here: http://tinyurl.com/kr785gf). One of the many criticisms of self-publishing is that there is simply no independent quality control mechanism. This is a polite way of saying people without talent are able to spurt out cliched and/or badly written garbage without anyone standing between their fevered ramblings and an unsuspecting world. This is to say, conventional publishing is the hallmark of quality, and with the best will in the world, even a talented author on their own lacks the polishing resources of editors and proofers available to a publishing house.
I do not subscribe to this view. Frankly, there’s some conventionally published works of questionable quality, but also publishing houses have limited resources, and at a time when conventional publishing is facing distinct challenges, I think it’s not too much of a stretch to think there more talented writers out there than opportunities to be published.
I buy a lot of self-published work – I get a lot of use out of my Kindle that way. I am cautiously optimistic Wattpad is another opportunity to find good work and good people. Onward.