“Three-quarters of the writers” at Saturday’s third annual Los Angeles Black Book Expo “were self-published, said Charles Chatmon, the festival’s executive director. ‘Rather than deal with the horrors of mainstream publishing, they prefer to control the finances and the content,’ said Chatmon, a proofreader for an Irvine biomedical firm who has self-published two poetry books. ‘And it’s the only way many African Americans can get their works out there.'”