Couldn't get past the survey in the PressForward site, and the TalentMatch, well it might be a good idea, but I'm cynical about people promising to expose aspiring artists to fame and fortune. TalentMatch's idea of vaudeville as a testing ground is an excellent one, but their focus is skewed. The word talent, for one, is misleading; it encapsulates one of the many romantic misconceptions around the arts. I have reached the conclusion that 'talent' is far less a determinant than artistic, social and business judgement; successful artists seem to be strong on at least two out of three. Even artists with lousy business sense can succeed through their relationships, because they attract patrons and advocates. The TalentMatch the emphasis seems to be on exposure and recognition, on putting up portfolios, rather than on development, experimentation, learning a craft and establishing relationships.

To my mind, the same kind of people are going to emerge as successful with the new media as with the old: the ones with a combination of talent, preparation, industry and opportunism. Three or four generations ago writers were founding small book presses and literary magazines to get their own and their friends' work into print: Virginia and Leonard Woolf published Joyce's Ulysses on their own press, along with Virginia's own work, to take an example of writers who have become institutions. Some of the SF greats started off in their own and other's fanzines.

It's a pity that self-published became tarred with the 'vanity' brush, and maybe the fact that self-publishing has become accessible to the majority will mean that it can go back to being part of the artistic, social and business apprenticeship of the writer, or, alternatively, an outlet for quality work that really does run athwart prevailing tastes. But I would put the majority of self-published works in the apprenticeship category without reservation; most of what I have seen lacks distinction in a way that has nothing to do with commercial appeal. But because everything has a normal distribution, there will be writing out there that is two sig figs above the average. It is a shame that independent sites have not grown up around finding and promoting the best of the ebook, epublished, web-published, self-published material, partly to get those people the notice they deserve and partly to show everyone (mainstream publisher and apprentice author alike) just how high the bar can be when a writer has control of their material and their craft, regardless of how the book is published.
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