[Veggie Todd]

I’ve read two self-published books. Both were virtually unreadable. Grammar, spelling, and a smooth flow from one idea to the next were sorely missing.

[papertyger]

I’ve read two self-published books. Both were virtually unreadable. Grammar, spelling, and a smooth flow from one idea to the next were sorely missing.

My wife's business model revolves around making such sow's ears into silk purses....

[TexasBarak]

I’ve read two self-published books. Both were virtually unreadable. Grammar, spelling, and a smooth flow from one idea to the next were sorely missing.

I've read a number of books just like this in electronic format. The author tells a good story, but desperately needs an editor. One author keeps using "tenant" when he means "tenet"- and even does it in his day to day blog.

[Travis McGee]

“I’ve read two self-published books. Both were virtually unreadable. Grammar, spelling, and a smooth flow from one idea to the next were sorely missing.”

Under the old model (dinosaur legacy publishing) the books were generally well-edited. But the model was just horrible for new authors, see my comment above, especially about baby sea turtles.

Now, thousands of baby sea turtles make it to the ocean, more than ever, and mot of them are so badly written and edited that they will die on their own. The trick is to separate your quality self-pub works from the growing crowd of trash.

Between the old and new model, the new model wins hands-down. It’s a level playing field to get published (especially in e-book format). The hard part is now separating your quality from the trash, but that is a much easier nut to crack than simply getting published under the old model.

[kjam22]

That's the thing that people often miss. Its the same with music. Publishers do perform a service by weeding out a lot of the junk.

Sometimes self published material is good. But way more often its not very good.