Digital and print-on-demand publishing has exponentially increased the number of people who can say, “I wrote a book,” and then point you to Amazon and other locations where it is for sale.

The indie publishing explosion of the past five to six years has been fascinating to watch – and shown how many talented writers there are that just needed a chance. The downside is there are a lot of books for sale that should never have been published. Either the idea didn’t rise to the level of being publishable – or the design and editorial development was so bad (or nonexistent) that a concept that could have been good to great has too many problems to be taken seriously.

In some cases, people have wanted to be an author without any real commitment to the craft. One of the jokes in the publishing industry is that more people want to write a book than read a book.

That raises a particular question in my mind: do you have to be a reader to be a writer? Is it possible? Are there those that can pull that off? Can you? In the following SlideShare presentation I raise five questions that question whether it is possible – but let you decide.