The central claim of this article, as detailed above, sounds faintly ridiculous when you pull it out of its context. But within the context of the article… well, let’s just say Ewan Morrison musters some interesting (and perhaps even convincing) support for his claim.
But I think the most interesting quote from this article comes much further down the screen, when Morrison writes of the rise of e-books and e-publishing, “If the connection between publishers and writers splits completely, if they fail to support and defend each other, then both will separately be subjected to the markets’ demand for totally free content, and both shall have very short lives in the long tail. The writer will become an entrepreneur with a short shelf life, in a world without publishers or even shelves.” It’s just too bad Morrison seems to think this split is inevitable.
