I have frequently predicted that we will see more and more small independent publishers, a la Baen Books, as the overhead for publishing goes down. I see the publishing industry being a lot more like the music industry rather than the movie industry. I think this blog post by Larry Correia about why he likes Baen Books is worth reading, it may have been linked here before.
http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/...with-baen-too/
Larry Correia is the sort of author who is going to thrive in today's publishing world. He started as an independent, then moved to Baen Books. He publishes a mix of independent and regular publishers depending on the project that he is working on. He mentions the multiple streams of revenue from paper books, ebooks and audio books.
For authors who generate a number of books a year, advances aren't really a big deal, especially is the advance is priced appropriately so that the author earns out in the first month or two. If a publisher does their job and provides value (i.e. editing, marketing, etc...) then they take all that work away from the author. Not all authors want to do all the grunt work needed to be a successful indie.