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If you look at the creative communities online today (flickr, deviantart, cartographersguild, photosig, numerous fiction sites, the open-source programming communities and projects, make magazine) you'll find a lot of amazing work (and a lot of horrible work! - and everything in between) shared freely by creatives. Some of it surpasses the commercial work I see daily in advertising, have read, etc. And the creatives behind it are happy to share it - for the feedback, the community and individual respect, and just because it makes them feel good to share their creative output. Some finesse this sharing into commercial ventures, some are happy with things the way they are. The number of views, the rating system, the comment system - all those things provide a lot of incentive to a lot of people.
I'm definitely not worried about creatives not producing. We'll see a wider range of creative output, as opposed to only seeing the current style/genre/fad. Sorting through it all will be challenging - but the choice will actually be there. Sorting/search/rating mechanisms are issues that are technically solved (IMHO) and merely need to be tweaked and further developed. I suspect we'll see online book communities thrive, as have other art communities as people begin to leverage the power of many people's perspectives as opposed to the opinions of a few who make decisions now in the publishing industry.
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