I Can't Find the Slushpile...Somebody Help!

One thing that has intrigued me about the on-going ebook debate are the claims made by some authors that they have gone through Amazon Kindle titles, downloaded samples, and found nothing but whale vomit. Having been a journalist in my past life, I decided some research was in order to see if what they claimed was true.

I have spent some time in the past two evenings sorting through Kindle titles, but cannot seem to locate the whale vomit (there's never any whale vomit around when you need it). I can view the top 100 ebooks, but they all seem to be from real publishers with the exception of some guy named Kilborne or Konrath or whatever name the dude is using today (what's his real name, anyway?). I looked for ebooks priced at .99 and $2.99, but could not locate any. The lowest price seemed to be around $5.

So my question is, if the self-published slush is so easy to find, where am I not looking? Is there a place I'm not clicking? If anybody can help out, I would appreciate a tip.

Or maybe the "slush" is not as easy to find as we've been led to believe, and certain commentators are so upset by what's going on that they're making claims that aren't true. Could this be a possibility? Do they not have a vested interest in seeing the so-called "ebook revolution" come to a crashing halt?

Smashwords is another story, of course, but that site doesn't seem to be at the center of this debate, and I don't even consider them a real player. (My ebooks are there so my pastor's wife can download them!) On that site the whale vomit is probably very easy to find. In fact, based on the descriptions some authors write, I don't even need a sample.

Of course this means that, by simply browsing Amazon, nobody can find my ebooks. This does not leave one encouraged. How is anybody supposed to read my self-published garbage (but hey, it's good garbage) if the titles aren't showing up with the rest?

I guess I'm going to have to go on a blog tour or something to point people in the right direction.....

So, if any of you loyal readers are willing, I am officially asking permission to do a guest post on your website. I can come up with something to talk about or you can select a topic. Please leave appropriate contact information in the comment section or at my email address, briandrake88@yahoo.com. Thank you for your time and attention.