Attached to the term "independent author" is a certain stigma: many people don't consider these author's work as "real." I understand it, sure. But do I think it is fair? Not at all. Let me explain.
On the one hand, I get that there is a lot of really bad work out there, and a lot of it is written by independent authors. For every good independently published book, there are probably ten bad ones (or more). Over the years, we've come to rely on publishers to sort of "weed out" the bad. They get thousands of submissions every week, and it's their job to pick the best (sometimes they're successful, other times, not so much) of the bunch. We count on them telling us which books are worth reading, just by virtue of which ones they decide to publish.
There's a problem there, though. Take Harry Potter, for example. I can't imagine a situation where a publisher would have read the manuscript for the first in that series, and said, "I don't think this is worth publishing." You can argue that the books (especially the early ones) weren't particularly well-written. You can even argue that they're overly whimsical. But to look at that, and say that it wouldn't be successful enough to warrant publishing? That seems a little silly to me. It happened though. I can't remember the number of publishers that turned it down, but it was in the double digits (and it took years).
So I have to ask the question: why? Well, it's not really hard to get. They get thousands of submissions each day. They can't afford to base their decisions on a whole book; they have to read a couple of chapters, and say yes or (usually) no. Does a slow-starting book mean that it's bad? No. Does it mean that most publisher won't touch it with a ten foot pole? Yes. That's just the way it is. Good books slip through the cracks of the current publishing model.
Self-publishing gives authors a chance to circumvent that flawed system. Have I submitted to publishers? Not really (only one, and that was because a buddy persuaded me to). Do I want to? Again, not really. I recognize that the system is flawed, and I don't want to contribute to it. Now, that's not to say that if, after my book has been on the market for a while, I wouldn't listen if a publisher contacted me. I certainly would, and I'd feel like I really earned it. I just don't want to contribute to the submission process.
I know the quality of my own work, and can objectively say that it's better than some books which have been published by "big" publishers. I won't sit here and say it's great or perfect (it's not), but above average? Yeah, I can say that. How far above average...well, that's up to you all.
