most of you should not be self-publishing and the "indie is just as legitimate" messaging is doing real harm

I know this sub leans heavily indie and I know how this is going to go over. But somebody has to say it plainly.

The "self-publishing is just as valid as traditional" messaging is true in principle and deeply misleading in practice. It's true that some indie authors out-earn most traditionally published authors. It's true that the gatekeeping in traditional publishing is real and often unfair. It's true that a small number of indie authors have built genuine careers.

What that messaging conveniently omits is that those success stories are a tiny fraction, that they almost all involve either enormous luck or enormous marketing skill that has nothing to do with writing, and that the median indie book sells fewer than 100 copies in its lifetime. The community talks constantly about the winners and almost never about the vast silent majority who spent thousands of dollars on editing and covers and sold to their immediate family.

For most writers, especially early ones, self-publishing is a way to skip the feedback loop that would have made them better. A rejection from fifty agents is information. It usually means the book isn't ready. Self-publishing lets you bypass that information entirely and put out a book that the market was trying to tell you needed more work. The frictionlessness is the danger.

I'm not anti-indie. I'm anti the specific way this community sells indie publishing to beginners as a no-downside choice. It has downsides. The biggest one is that it removes every external check that would have told you to keep going before you published