I posted the following as a comment over on Amy Sundberg’s blog, and I encourage you to head over there to take a look at the context and other voices in the discussion. My own two cents seemed coherent enough that I wanted to include it here as well:
My concern with self-publishing, as with small press publishing and big press publishing is the issue of the signal to noise ratio.
It’s useful to remember Sturgeon’s Law, that 95% of anything is crap. Ideally, gatekeepers exist to address this point, to weed out the good from the sea of bad, and present only the worthwhile (accepting for the moment that you agree with a given gatekeeper’s operational definition for what is worthwhile).
At a large press, a good editor or editorial team takes on this role, and for those portions of “worthwhile” defined as “profitable” there’s a marketing team involved as well. As a small press (for example, the one I operate) there may only be one or two editors working on a project and the question of “how much money will this book make” may not even come up at all (though the question of “how much do we stand to lose” usually does).
In self-publishing, there may not be a professional editor and the author has to shoulder the responsibility of both creative artist and gatekeeper. And more often than not, objectivity goes out the window. Most of the authors I know (and I’m including myself) are rarely the best judge of whether their own work.
I run a small press and from day one made the decision never to publish my own work. Why? For the same reason I don’t expect people submitting novellas to me to include rave reviews from their mothers. There’s no objectivity there. At best there’s an attempt, but c’mon, writing is a very subjective, in-your-own-head kind of thing.
If you’re going to self publish, that’s fine, but unless you bring in an outside editor (and while you’re at it, let’s go with a proof reader and copy editor as well), my best guess is you’re going to land in the wrong portion of that 95% / 5% divide.