Publisher’s Weekly is increasing its coverage of self-published books, reports the Atlantic. PW Select, its supplement dedicated to the world of self-publishing, began as a quarterly publication before going bi-monthly. Now it’s going monthly, effectively doubling the coverage of self-published books.

This is a good move on PW’s part, and reflects what’s already a reality in the publishing industry: self-publishing is an indelible part of the landscape, and no longer carries a stigma for writers. Writers like E.L. James and Amanda Hocking have gained the notice of major publishing houses after racking up huge sales in self-pub; and more recently, Sergio De La Pava’s self-published A Naked Singularity won a PEN award after getting picked up by the U of Chicago Press.

With PW Select, Publisher’s Weekly is one of the only mainstream trade publications to review self-published titles. Most book reviews deny self-pubbed titles for purely pragmatic reasons: the difficulty of sifting through the massive number of self-published books to decide which are worth reviewing is prohibitive. But somehow PW has made it work. This should be a wake-up call, not just for book reviews that currently dismiss self-pubbed books out of hand, but for ones that seem to apply literary/genre distinctions as a clumsy filtering mechanism. If PW can figure out a way to make their reviewing methodology more democratic, practical, reflective of the changing publishing landscape, and useful to their audience, then surely other editorial boards can do the same.