Self-Publishing and Liberation, etc.

Belatedly, here is Laura Miller's excellent June 22nd Salon.com essay concerning eBook- and POD-enabled self-publishing:

If you have any contact with the publishing world, you probably hear some version of the story above every day. What's most striking, however, about the many, many conversations I've had about e-books, innovations in self-publishing and the emergence of publicity venues like social networking is how difficult it is to stay focused on what all of this means for readers. No matter how hard you try, within five minutes the talk turns inexorably back to how agents, editors and publishers will suffer in the coming cataclysmic change -- and, above all, how gloriously liberating it will be for authors. ...