Now that I have stepped out of the world of "traditional publishing," in which I was employed for 25+ years, and work with individuals and businesses to bring their content to the public in a "grantless" universe, I have given considerable thought to the idea of the publisher as "gatekeeper."

Does the gatekeeper role validate the role of the publisher? Perhaps ... at one time, but there are publishers who, to survive, publish to meet the criteria of grants. Selection is skewed to satisfy the criteria of an organization outside of the press. Is this a gatekeeper role? Or books are published because they will add to the bottom line. Is this a gatekeeper role? Or books are published to satisfy a passion of the publisher? Or not published to satisfy the politics of a publisher.

I recently attended a book conference and was accused by a prominent publisher of being a patsy of the oil companies because Kingsley Publishing Services (not a "traditional" publisher) recently released a book that takes a politically incorrect approach to discussing a controversial topic in The Oil Sands: Canada's Path to Clean Energy? by Calgarian Gordon Kelly. I assume this means that this publisher would dismiss this manuscript out of hand because it does not fit with his political views. Or, gasp, that I published this because someone paid me to. My heart is no longer pure. I thought books were all about making people think, respond, argue, react, TALK.

My point is that there are many reasons publishers choose manuscripts, and not all of them have to do with the quality of the manuscript itself. Intelligent people can make their own decisions about what to publish; they do not have to be a "publisher" to make that call. There are some amazing publishing houses in this country, but the current model does not work for everyone. So let the final quality of the product speak for itself, not who produced it.