[indigotwilight]

This is really interesting. It makes one wonder just what the future has in store for the industry as a whole.
Could there be a point where an agent and author decides to publish by themselves, cutting out the mainstream publisher altogether? It seems, on reading, that as the publishers are far more likely to take on non-fiction projects on the basis they are 'easier' to sell, then many more fiction writers will start up their own independent publishing chains.
Look inside most novels, and you can see: Typsetting by such-and-such. Printed and bound at ----, and the publisher just throws in the start up capital for the production costs. If a publisher can send off a typscript to these places, then surely an agent and author can too.

It reminds me, a little, of the music industry. Research into the independent scene tells you many of these bands started up on their own labels, often triggered by a disgruntled audience fed up with the 'manufactured' quality of music from the the larger record companies. In the eighties came punk and gothic, later the Indie scene with the advent of bands like Stone Roses and The Charlatans. Then, one day, the indie scene took off, giving rise to Oasis, Blur, Sleeper and countless others. It split, it went commercial, it turned into Brit-Pop and became the next big thing.
At the turn of the millenium, heavy metal music was a thriving market again. Gothic and Punk endured a massive revival. Suddenly, there were new genres replacing the old. Hard-core punk gave way to Emo, Metal to Nu-metal... Gothic merged with sythpop to create a new type of Industrial.

Could a similar thing happen in publishing?

Twi