[Peter Graham]

and those who dismiss all of it as vanity publishing are making the same mistake of blindly adhering to the old model that publishing houses are now doing.

I disagree. There is a tendency for people to see traditional publishing and e-publishing as different, as though the paper publishers have no interest in exploiting e-books, either now or in the future. To me, "traditional" is not about the medium so much as the model. The model is simple - the publisher pays you for the privilege of publishing your work and makes money if they sell it. If you are paying them for the privilege of publishing your work, you are in the vanity/self-publishing arena.

I have never said that all self published work is rubbish. For a minority, it is the right way to go. But good self published material is increasingly drowned in an ocean of rubbish written by folk who are desperate to see themselves as writers but who, for the most part, can't actually write.

And those people are making money. Some of them are making far, far more than any writer could dream of making through traditional publishing.

A tiny number of them might be, but the same is true of Lottery winners.

Sure, they're rare, one in a million, but even if you get published traditionally the statistical odds of ever making anything out of it are virtually zilch.

Are they? How come the publishing houses are still in business?

Regards,

Peter