[dmaul1114]

You can have all that without publishers. Authors can hire editors/proofreaders, they can hire a marketing firm etc.

All without having a publishing contract that's keeping prices up and paying them little per copy sold.

Obviously an up and coming author will have a harder time as they don't have the money to hire those services--so publishers will stick around for at least newcomers.

But hopefully at least successful authors can just pay for editing/proofing/marketing out of pocket and then reap all the profits for each copy sold as an e-book after paying for those costs with the first few thousand book sales etc.

A good example is music, where some famous bands have started distributing their own music. When their contract with Epic was up, Pearl Jam didn't sign a new deal. Their last album Backspacer they sold on their own--CDs and MP3s from their website, and signed an exclusive retail deal with Target--as well as shipping copies to independent record stores themselves.

No reason a successful author can't do something similar, especially as the e-book market widens and the need for physical copies in stores declines.