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It's interesting that the author of the article applies historical trends to the self-epublishing phenomenon, but doesn't consider the current parallels. This is not some tulip-mania or housing bubble. The closest comparable, it seems to me, is YouTube. Rather than being the death of television or movies, and rather than flaming out because only a handful become stars like Justin Bieber, the YouTube phenomenon persists and will continue to persist because it's easy and cheap and satisfies a need - the dream of striking it big. When something like that is made so easy and so seductive, it is not going to go away simply because of the rarity of its effectiveness - on the contrary! Like winning the super-lotto, it keeps happening, driving the dream onward. People will continue to self-publish, trying to become that Amanda Hocking or Suzanne Collins, in the same way that singers continue to try and become Justin Bieber. Whether or not this is detrimental to the conglomerate publishing industry is another matter, but I doubt we'll see self-publishing fade away any time soon
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