A recent selection from Salon, Salon.com Books | The confessions of a semi-successful author, captures some of the frustration of a mid-list author. It also effectively conveys book-lust. Jane Austen Doe isn't happy unless she's writing, but not just any kind of writing, she needs to be writing books.

The world has been changing, and we've known that this change was coming for a long time. The price of freedom is that the older ways don't work as well as they once did.

Back when the middle men, the editors and publishers and book-binders were able to make a handsome profit by distributing content, it was in their interest to support a stable supply of content, that is writers. Now that the distribution channel is no longer a guarantee of profit, there's no particular value in keeping

The truly important stories and the stories that author's feel that they absolutely must tell however, are still going to find a home. Its the writer's that needed the income and the defense of the editorial process that are going to suffer. Those who don't require the cache of publishing a book have a problem.
Writing for its own sake is easily accomplished. Finding an audience for writing produced mostly to satisfy a writer's needs is not nearly so easy.

Inherently valuable writing, the sort of writing that either inspires or conveys ground breaking new wisdom, is more difficult to produce. However, it doesn't have trouble finding an audience once its produced.

Of course, the day of the book has not yet past.

Finally, its been said that there are too many books published each year. Even more, its been said that there are too many philosophy books published each year, I'm sure other disciplines have similar difficulties. There are only too many books being published if the criteria is that some signficant portion of the reading public reads every book worthy of note. This is not necessarily our goal.
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