Readers Beware: Digital Slush Ahead

“Will readers have to flounder in an ocean of slush before the new gatekeepers appear to rescue them?” Laura Miller on how it’s getting harder to be a discerning reader in the digital self-publishing era. “People who have never had the job of reading through the heaps of unsolicited manuscripts sent to anyone even remotely connected with publishing typically have no inkling of two awful facts: 1) just how much slush is out there, and 2) how really, really, really, really terrible the vast majority of it is.” Will bookworms be saved by amateur authorities who sort the wheat from the chaff?