"The essential problem here is that publishers do, it turns out, actually fulfil some useful roles. Publicist is one of the major ones. (Editor and designer are

"The essential problem here is that publishers do, it turns out, actually fulfil some useful roles. Publicist is one of the major ones. (Editor and designer are two other important, undervalued skills that publishers traditionally take on.)" Exactly, and these roles are a lot more crucial than most would-be self publishing authors take into consideration before getting started. Amanda Hocking, one of the more famous of the self-publishers in recent years, decided to switch to a major publisher. Her rationale was that marketing, publicity, design, etc., had become 99% of her job, relegating writing to 1%. She wanted the reverse. She loves to write; she is less interested in running a publishing startup (which is, essentially, what a self-published author needs to be doing to be successful). I think it's a very interesting insight.