BookBrunch - Self-publishing: time for a reality check

To get back to the Observer report: Baverstock alleges that "traditional publishers" have for too long ignored "respectable soft porn" and "gentle memoirs of everyday disasters, such as losing a child" - a highly debatable claim. However, she then goes on to make some rather valid points: that editors come from a "very limited gene pool - all agree on what they like -  they know each other, and are not necessarily in touch with popular taste". If we're talking, as Baverstock undoubtedly is, of mainstream London publishing, that "gene pool" indeed remains, even today, overwhelmingly white, often public school and Oxbridge-educated and mostly metropolitan. But it's not so much that they "agree on what they like" - rather that they behave like sheep, terrified of missing out on the next big thing.