Slipped Through the Net

I'm reading a novel at the moment that I have been asked to review and I have to say it is probably one of the worse books that I've ever come across. This creates for me a dilemma in that I feel I should review the book honestly but at the same time I find myself as an unpublished writer of novels assuming that this is how people will react to my own work.

The book in question (which I won't name) is full of clichéd characters, a premise that is seriously flawed, the language is poor and the pace almost lethargic. It's just not a very good book and I'm sure any amount of clever editing would not have helped. But the book has made it into print. The publishers are classed as independent, which if you don't know the publishing world, means small print runs and selling (in the main) via the Internet. Now there are some excellent works that get published by the independents, work that is perhaps niche and would not see the light of day without them, but even by their standards this work is dire and that makes me worry that some publishers will give this part of the industry a bad name by putting out works of a substandard nature. My work, 'The Missing', if it gets published, will probably get taken up by the independents and it concerns me to be tarred with the same brush. All I can hope is that similar to the big publishing houses not every book that comes out can be deemed successful or even 'good'. Perhaps this is one of those that slipped through the net.