Does it matter how a book gets published?

[Amelia]

I'm self-published. There's a stigma within the writing/publishing community that self-published books are crap. They're not good enough for a 'real' publisher. But the comments I get from readers leads me to think they don't care how a book is published as long as it's well-written and a good story. What do you think?

[Vanessa]

I think the stigma will go away. Publishing used to be a very closed world. It is opening up. I am finding some very interesting writers in the online self-published community. Readers can make their own decisions and in the end it's what readers want that matters, not what publishers decide to publish. By the way I'm also finding that a lot of Kindle books produced by the mainstream publishers like Penguin are not produced to the same high technical standard as those uploaded by self-published authors. I think mainstream publishers are too slow to adapt to the new technology, don't understand it properly and have no idea as yet how to adjust their marketing techniques. The new wave of self-published authors will prove to be much more literate, ingenious and innovative than they could ever imagine.