We all like to believe that writers, on the whole, are a supportive, welcoming, and friendly community, and in many ways, that is true. Unfortunately, however, the transformation of the publishing industry has at once multiplied those able to claim the once elusive title of "author" and (quite illogically) divided our community into rather combative groups. Subtle as we like to believe it is, this rift between indie and traditionally published authors is actually quite pronounced and rather destructive.
Perhaps because the decision to self-publish is still finding its footing, fighting for legitimacy, self-published authors quite vehemently denounce the traditional publishing model. Some claim that traditional publishing takes advantage of writers, who are paid a fairly small percentage from the sale of a given copy of a book, and then generally must share that small percentage with their agent. Others claim that breaking into the traditional publishing model with its "arbitrary" judgment on the quality of a given book is nearly impossible — one recent post I came across implied the chances of that happening for a writer are about equal to winning the lottery.
While there is some truth to the fact that we as writers frequently cannot see or understand why a given project, despite its many merits, may be passed over, and writers need significant persistence to make it within the traditional paradigm, it is far from impossible, as evidenced by the steady flow of writers signing with both agents and publishers.
