When anyone with a computer can publish themselves, what determines the value of a writer? What makes a good writer? You can dash off a story, whip up a cover, upload a file, press a button labelled Publish and have your book appear on a book-selling website instantly.  Okay, so it isn’t quite that simple—you do have to be able to make your word document clean enough for ebook-making software to turn it into something readable on an ereader—but you don’t have to pay an editor. You don’t even have to edit it! And you can throw the cover together yourself in a word document! Sure, the result is likely to be crappy—very crappy—but the point is that you can do that little and still have a published book to your name. Then readers can find it—if they’re unlucky or you’ve spent a bit of money in advertisements or have a lot of friends and make it cheap or free—and they can even read it and like it and give it 5 star reviews. Argh! Why? Because, as with all art forms, most people don’t know … [Read more...]