Yeah, that, as someone who is horrid at self promotion, is something that worries me too. I think also when you dedicate a lot of time to self promotion and you have to spend tons of time engaging with fans, etc. it makes less time to do creative work, which results in less total output. I know when I'm trying to meet social demands it I get stressed out and work less and produce work of poorer quality...there's got to be a balance point somewhere.

I think also, you know, the gatekeeper system DOES have a valid function in terms of sorting wheat from chaff. It sometimes tosses out good wheat in the process, but totally unregulated distribution of content results in a HUGE signal to noise ratio, making it really hard for work of good quality to stand out and get attention. (People say 'oh, but the good work will filter to the top' and that is to some extent true, but it requires a lot of floating in scum first.)