In Salon.com, http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2010/06/22/slush?source=newsletter, Laura Miller bemoans the advent of subsidy self-publishing and asks how the reader will find something worthwhile in the pile of books now being produced. 

She reminds us that 700,000 books get ISBNs every year.  That whopping number includes text books, non-fiction, fiction, and new releases of old editions. What she really addresses in her article is the roughly 46,000 fiction titles produced each year.  That’s a lot of books but significantly less than 700,000. 

If readers attempted to wade through all those titles unaided, the results would undoubtedly be as she predicted. They would get tainted by some of the poorly written material that is out there.  In her analysis, however, she overlooks the word-of-mouth factor.  It is the recommendations or warnings from countless book clubs, backyard barbecues, and family parties that help us find buried treasure and avoid books that should have stayed in a writer's imagination. Word-of-mouth is the reason Iron Chef America exits.  There was a time when no one had heard of Pixar or J. K. Rowling. 

The Internet and social networking have created a marketplace that will weed out much of the garbage and lift up some wonderful finds. Today’s readers have no illusions about finishing something they dislike.  They don’t waste time wading through a bad book.  If they don’t like it, they put it aside and pick up another.  Whether today’s books are whipping cream or sour milk has less to do with how they are printed than with what readers actually think of them.   

As you read the dire predictions about the demise of the traditional publishing model, keep in mind that change is often difficult. In the long run, it won’t matter at all whether a work appears on paper or in pixels. Its success or failure will depend entirely on what people think of it. That is the reason you should make your work the best it can be.