""Self-publishing is different in the age of the Kindle.Before, the self-publishing industry was basically offering amateur authors ego masturbation. Can't get published by a publishing house? Publish yourself so you can call yourself a "published author." The prospect of making money off of your work was asymptotically approaching zero. You have to find a local bookstore who will carry your book. Or distribute it on word of mouth. Or more than likely put a bunch of copies of it on the shelves of your writing room at home. Or give them away. Or burn them for warmth because you spent your heating oil money to become a published author. Basically, it was impossible to reach an identifiable fraction of success of a book published by a traditional house.In the age of the Kindle, self-publishing is a more worthwhile endeavor. I can get my work out to the masses via the power of the internet, and they can easily pick it up for a reasonable price. No major bricks-and-mortar bookstore was going to carry your Edgar Rice Burroughs wannabe swords-and-tits fantasy novel. But now the biggest bookstore in the world, Amazon, will. And you can sell it at a price that would bankrupt a traditional publisher. A price attainable for all the teenagers that are your target audience. And you might even make money off of it in the end.So I think your writing professors were correct. But they were correct in the 80's, and they're dumbasses now.""- 47Ronin on Reddit r/writing
