> Could someone who knows more than me please share why this matters at all from a competition standpoint? If quality content is written, it can be self publish

> Could someone who knows more than me please share why this matters at all from a competition standpoint? If quality content is written, it can be self published online for essentially free. Publishers do provide some essential services like editors, and making sure your book looks good, and distribution. However, much like the music industry, they are unbelievably greedy bastards. And we all know what happened to music industry. There are only four big music corporations in the world that have a stranglehold on ~90% of world music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Consolidation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Consolidation You really don't want that to happen to any media.