selling books in the internet age

The San Francisco Chronicle ran this article on how some authors are avoiding the traditional publishing model.

“The old model was you had to go through an agent, then the editor and publisher, then the bookstore to get to fans,” notes Harwood. “Now you can bypass all those gatekeepers and go straight to the fans online.”

Naysayers insist that the problem with self-published books is that they are not subject to the same standards of quality that conventional publishing houses maintain when they weed out less qualified contenders and put manuscripts through a rigorous vetting and editing process.

“A weeding-out process has to happen,” Harwood grants, “but you can let the fans do the weeding instead of the agents and publishers.”