Self-Publishing: the Hockings, the Greek Seaman and a lot of Pratts

Having purchased your Kindle and downloaded your fill of popular classics  the thrifty reader will then have their eye irresistibly drawn to the plethora of works available for 69p or thereabouts.  What kind of literature retails for the cost of 500g of Dairy Milk?

Most of it is self-published.  Even the most cursory look at self-publishing leads, with the inevitability of Nick Clegg abandoning a point of principle, to the name of Amanda Hocking.  The economics are pretty compelling:  without the costs of cutting down trees, chopping, pulping, printing and buying expensive lunches for publishers it's possible for a writer to compile a .doc file, transfer it to an e-reading device at minimal cost, charge a small amount and end up with more cash than most traditionally published writers who aren't called J K Rowling.  70% royalties as opposed to the 15% at best for paper books.
One of the most important companies in the flourishing world of self-publishing is Smashwords, who both act as a publisher selling direct to readers and as an aggregator, converting submissions into the formats required by major distributors such as Apple, Barnes and Noble, and, of course, Amazon for Kindle in return for a small percentage of royalties.  Founder Mark Coker certainly makes a convincing case for this "pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap" approach in an article for the Huffington Post.  Though not having any physical stock means you don't even need a pile, nor the space to store it.  The perfect 'get rich quick scheme'?
Brian S Pratt certainly seems to be raking it in.  One of the costs self-publishing cuts out is editing and proof-reading.  Mr Pratt is no G R R Martin or Terry Pratchett:  his prose is poor even by the undemanding standards of the fantasy genre, flat and cliché-ridden, laden with frequent grammatical errors and typos; his characterisation is rudimentary and the pacing is idiosyncratic.  Does any of that matter if there are readers satisfied enough to come back for more and pay for it?
We seem to be entering a new era of publishing where the traditional role of the publisher as gate-keeper guaranteeing that work has passed a quality control test has passed and, at least for now, entering one where the reader chooses for himself whether something is worth buying.  And a sizeable chunk of readers don't seem to regard correct grammar and scrupulous copy-editing as make or break factors in a budget buy.
Self-publishing does seem to offer writers a way to connect directly with readers and the possibility of making money from it without having to meet the exacting standards demanded by traditional publishers.  But if you're hoping to make money by churning out copy that reads as if it's been through Babelfish to Hugarian and back a couple of times and commissioning  your mother to write gushing reviews on Amazon it's best to develop a thick skin as the now legendary tantrum thrown by Jacquline Howett to a rather generous review of her opus 'The Greek Seaman' shows.