All it takes is reading one godawful self pubbed work where it quickly becomes apparent that the writer ignored every. single. article about writing (including self publishing) about critique groups and editing to say, “gatekeeper, please.” I’ve gotten smarter about saying “no” to these because it is simply not worth my time to read. And yes, I resent the idea that book bloggers who read for the love of reading (very few of us are paid, I am one of the exceptions) should now become the free gatekeeper, instead of the paid gatekeepers instead of agent/ publisher / editors, to figure out what is crap and what is not.

Your mileage may vary. Awesome! You go read those. I will continue to pay for value — a well edited, well written book.

Do some self published authors do it “Right”, in terms of editing?

Yes.

But they are few and far between.

That said, if a library wants to pay me to read slush 35 – 40 hours a week? AWESOME. But why would they when librarians aren’t allowed to read on the job? They don’t pay to read real books. For some, they don’t even pay to read professional review journals.