Gee, What A Surprise — Or The Beginning Of The End

In a December 2010 entry titled, "Chutzpah", we wrote the following:

In the event you've been living in a cave isolated from the outside world for the past decade or so, we'd like to call to your attention that it's the year two-thousand-and-ten A.D., Print On Demand (POD) publishing is available to anyone with a book to publish at little to no cost, and the eBook, also available to anyone with a book to publish at little to no cost, has finally come into its own. So, the question is: Why, then, the necessity or need today for book publishing houses? What function do they perform or what service do they provide that an author could not perform or provide himself, or hire experts to perform or provide for him? In short, why are book publishing houses still in business today at all?

Answer: Beats us. Book publishing houses are an anachronism; a relic of the pre-digital past who have — or rather, should have — no place whatsoever in today's book publishing market for new books.

Today, we read this not unexpected revelation.

Sounds to us like the beginning of the end for old-world-style book publishing as far as the general market for new books is concerned, and sounds to us as well the right way to go. We suspect the transition will take almost a generation before it's fully accomplished, but accomplished it will almost certainly be.