I can already see people hoping in with but publishers do so much more comments. This is true, but somewhat besides the point. The point is that publishers, in

I can already see people hoping in with but publishers do so much more comments. This is true, but somewhat besides the point. The point is that publishers, in their traditional form, are highly adapted to an environment that no longer exists. At its centre is a reality that printing books is expensive and is cheaper the larger the volume. Someone needs to speculate and invest money upfront to do the printing. Since larger volume is cheaper one big book is better than lots of little books. Risk investors also usually like to minimize investments so that they can know them better. This creates a push for volume and low risk. For that you need to increase upfront spend on things like shelfspace and publicity which then increases the pressure for bigger (higher volume) books. These upfront costs keep eating into (percentage-wise) what is left for the author. Since it means bigger sales, the individual author might be better off but as a whole, the pie doesn't get much bigger. Mostly the pie gets divided in a way that includes fewer authors and more things like financing, screening, etc. Since "publishers" became this amalgamation of services that make up most of the production and distribution price of books, it makes sense to keep adding services. Going from 68% to 71% is not the same as going from 4% - 7%. Like software, music, video and anything else that got digitized, two things changed: marketing (promotion, sale, distribution) went online and costs went down. Marginal costs to near zero and capital costs to a flexible level (you still need to write the book, but there is no minimum print run). That removes the need for size, removes the need for risk management, makes room for lots of little books, and lots of other things that make the old publisher model somewhat redundant. The different elements get mixed up. Amazon/Apple are sort of lean publishers + retailers + publicists. Thats using the old terms though and they don't really describe the new things very well. Anyway.. Maybe in the future new leaner publishers take over. Maybe authors self publish but hire the services of publicists, editors and such independently. We don't really know. At this point though it doesn't seem obvious that traditional publishers are any closer to the ideal version than self publishing authors. There is also a wildcard in here that the product itself can be radically transformed by sales, distribution and consumption mediums. We know about magazines calling short stories into existence. We know about itunes causing a shift from albums to single songs. Maybe short stories will return. Maybe the future is £0.10 per chapter of a 1000 chapter/30 year page book (please nobody tell George RR Martin about this). Maybe its "subscribe to this author. Maybe copyright will die and free will take over.