The fantasy/sci-fi genres of literature are under threat of assault and degradation. I say this only because the advent of direct publishing with Amazon's Kindle services is likely going to cause a flood of C-grade material to spring forth onto the digital marketplace. I'm all for including new names and faces into the industry, but without some sort of gatekeepers in place to ensure that quality keeps at a premium within these genres, things are going to get bad.
How many people play Dungeons and Dragons or World of Warcraft tell you that they can whip together a story of the calibur put forth by the titans of the field (Donaldson, Brooks, Pratchett, Asimov, Bradbury, Lovecraft, and Ellison come to mind just to name a few)? Plenty of them. Now, how many of these folks can actually measure up to the task? I'm guessing a piddling handful of them can, but you and I won't know until they inundate the marketplace with their drek. And trust me, a boatload of it will be nothing but unadulterated crap.
I'm not trying to be a snob; lord knows I'm not the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I know it. My narrative has its shortcomings. That's why I work as tightly as possible with my editors at Booksforabuck and Untreed Reads. Editors are great to have access to and to work with, because as much as they may make a storyteller grumble, they only pick and poke at us because that's their job, to ensure that we're actually putting out our A game.
Anywho, let's just hope that direct publishing doesn't soil the genre. I'd hate to see fantasy go down in flames.
Cheers.
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