But, I understand limiting what one reads to known quantities!

Agreed. Its a walled garden. Easier to maintain since reading is time expensive but just like music, it’s becoming more decentralized for people to self publish. I recently met a woman that was a writer and I could only buy her book on kindle. I surprised her by reading it to surprise her but the...

I don’t think indie published books are more likely to be mediocre. Instead, it’s just that there are *a lot* of them, and books in general. And so when there is a flood of like 3.6 out of 5 rated books, I just wonder who the audience is that goes and reads them.