Contrary to popular belief, things don’t get easier as time goes on. Something might be more convenient to do (like online banking or call-ahead restaurant ordering) but that doesn’t mean life is any easier.

Take publishing, for example. It used to be a long process: after long writing and editing sessions, authors endured agonizing waiting periods while their manuscripts were examined and considered by agents, often only to endure even more excruciating time spent on pins and needles as that agent shopped the manuscript around for a publisher. All of that was followed by a year or so of thankfully busier but no less time waiting for that manuscript to be transformed into a book.

Done yet? Not quite. If a book did well in hardcover, it was then sent through another long process to be melted down into a paperback book which would, hopefully, sell even more copies.

Along the way, critics weighed in. Book reviewers from major newspapers and magazines had their say: good, bad, disappointing, surprisingly well done for a debut novelist….

Those reviews mattered. A lot. They determined whether books would be purchased by libraries and bookstores, which is where people used to (almost exclusively) find what they were going to read.

So you’d think today’s process of write, edit, format, push the Publish button would be so much easier than it used to be.

Well, as I said: faster and more convenient, yes. Easier, not really.

You still have to navigate through the roiling waters of scam artists–you’re like chum thrown into a swirling swarm of sharks.

Not only that, your book–which was never vetted by professional agents (who know what publishers want), publishers (who know what people will buy), and book reviewers (who know a good book when they read one)–goes directly to readers.

A lot of writers are glad for this: they relish having a fanbase and writing for them, critics be damned. For other writers, it’s like being thrown into a different shark tank where their book is torn to shreds by people who miss the point or simply aren’t their targeted readers (something those professionals are keen to identify so this can be avoided when the book reaches the public).

Writers whose manuscripts would not have made it through the first hurdles in the traditional path to publishing had their feelings spared by not being rejected by agents or publishers instead get pummeled by readers who–for whatever reason–just didn’t like their book.

Or maybe the reader who pans the book is an ex with an axe to grind, a jealous rival, someone who got the book for free and was never much interested in it, or someone whose only goal was to get course credit for reading it or wanted another book toward their Goodreads annual reading goal.

Who knows? Maybe the book just wasn’t that good. Maybe the writer should have considered hiring a professional editor in the first place.

Whatever the reason, whatever the remedy, the truth is that once your book is out there, you’ve fed it to the sharks you thought you were avoiding. You can only try to keep your boat from capsizing, stay the course, and keep moving forward to waters less choppy.

Or is it just me? What have you experienced in publishing? Good? Bad? Brutal? Wonderful?