Slog Tipper Cedar points out that Apple has just released self-publishing guidelines for the iBookstore.

This comes at the same time as Garrison Keillor's latest harrumphing editorial for the New York Times about how self-publishing is ruining the sweet deal that authors had back in the good old days.

And if you want to write, you just write and publish yourself. No need to ask permission, just open a Web site. And if you want to write a book, you just write it, send it to Lulu.com or BookSurge at Amazon or PubIt or ExLibris and you’ve got yourself an e-book. No problem. And that is the future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75.

Back in the day, we became writers through the laying on of hands. Some teacher who we worshipped touched our shoulder, and this benediction saw us through a hundred defeats. And then an editor smiled on us and wrote us a check and our babies got shoes. But in the New Era, writers will be self-anointed.

While I am on the record as saying that 99.9% of all self-published books are total crap (and the last time I said that, I immediately got 15 e-mails from self-published authors claiming to be that .1%.), whining about big advances disappearing isn't the best way to voice a protest against self-publishing.