My startup is a site for aspiring writers so I get to hear different sides of this argument a lot. I, for one, am completely certain that e-books and self-publ

My startup is a site for aspiring writers so I get to hear different sides of this argument a lot. I, for one, am completely certain that e-books and self-publishing will not sound the death-knell of big publishing houses. Once the publishers get used to the concept of digital, it'll just be another avenue of sales for them. I say this for most of the reasons Paul lists in this article, but the big one is this: Publishers act as gatekeepers to quality. If anyone with a pulse can publish an e-book and sell it online, it's impossible to tell if the book is good. The only way to find out is to read it, which to many is a huge time commitment. If you're going to commit a few days of your time to something that you hope will entertain or enlighten you, you sure as hell don't want to waste that time on a sub-par book. Buying a book from an established publisher guarantees that at least an objective third party has read this book and thinks it's worth other people's time, and that same third party has edited the book to ensure a certain level of quality in the writing, grammar, and spelling. On the other hand, spending $19.99 on a PDF file called "Eternal Moonlight: The Vampire Chronicles" that you downloaded from a random guy's blog has no guarantee that anybody but his mom signed off on it. Does anyone want to waste a weekend reading that when they could read something that at least a small committee (the publisher) has decided is worth your time and money? Finally, the marketing and legal aspect is huge as well. I interact with many authors every day. They don't understand that writing the book is only half the battle. As with any business venture, marketing is just as, if not more important than, the act of writing. You can write The Great American Novel but it'll die in a landfill if nobody knows they should read it. Writers assume that if they write something truly incredible that cherubs will descend from the heavens and magically lift their book into the hands of the slobbering masses without any effort on the author's part. This, of course, is a fantasy, and publishers provide the incredibly important marketing muscle to promote a great book to an already media-saturated public. So, in short, having spent the last few years surrounded by authors, publishers, and web 2.0 entrepreneurs, I'm totally confident in agreeing with this article because I've been making these exact same points for a while now myself :)