It's Time to Bring Literature into the 21st Century

Time had an interesting (and lengthy) article the other day about publishing and the future of books. It opens with the story of authors who have landed lucrative book deals with major publishers after first having self-published, and goes on to talk about the inefficiency of traditional publishing (all those excess books going back and forth), and even gives a nod to fanfiction and other 'for-free' types of writing/reading.

Put these pieces together, and the picture begins to resolve itself: more books, written and read by more people, often for little or no money, circulating in a wild diversity of forms, both physical and electronic, far outside the charmed circle of New York City's entrenched publishing culture. Old Publishing is stately, quality-controlled and relatively expensive. New Publishing is cheap, promiscuous and unconstrained by paper, money or institutional taste. If Old Publishing is, say, a tidy, well-maintained orchard, New Publishing is a riotous jungle: vast and trackless and chaotic, full of exquisite orchids and undiscovered treasures and a hell of a lot of noxious weeds.

Books Gone Wild: The Digital Age Reshapes Literature

This ties in to a book I just read titled Remix by Lawrence Lessig. His focus was more on media such as music and movies, but there's lots to think about. If we can't believe the old writing books anymore when they tell us not to self-publish and if old copyright laws are no longer serving the creator, then what's a writer to do?