Cutting out the middleman means returning things like writing to a craft rather than of an afterthought that is part of an industrial process of creating books.
I don't know anything about publishing except for computer manuals and science fiction. Computer manuals are being slowly revolutionized, I think, by the Pragmatic Programmers (and their ~50% cut for authors, IIRC) and to a lesser extent O'Reilly.
In science fiction, the "middlemen" are perhaps slightly less exploitive than you suggest. The typical SF editor works in Manhattan for considerably less money than most of us make. The SF publishing houses, again, are not giant profit centers, and all but a few books generate modest profits. From where I'm standing, it's got "lifestyle business" written all over it.
Some authors, such as John Scalzi, are extremely happy to focus on writing, and not on contract negotiation, international sales, cover design, marketing, and so on. In economic terms, they're putting all of their working hours to the most profitable use, and farming everything else out to specialists. Or to put it in technology terms, they're like talented coders who dislike sales, marketing and management, and who just want to write code. Not everybody is an entrepreneur, including some people as business- and PR-savvy as Scalzi.
Plus, there are customers like me, who appreciate strong and talented editing. Karl Schroeder's novel Ventus had about 90,000 words cut from the second half at the recommendation of an editor, who said, roughly, The first half of the book is a lovely travelogue across a fascinating world; the second half is a mad race. You need to cut the travelogue stuff from the second half or you'll drive the reader nuts. By Schroeder's own admission, this advice improved the pace of the book tremendously.
Now, absolutely none of this is meant as a knock on people churning out penny-dreadful ebooks on the Kindle and making a killing. They're serving a real market need, and plenty of readers really want significant volume at an affordable price. In the military SF world, this need is mostly met by Baen's DRM-free webscriptions, which combine significant volume, low prices, and the occasional startlingly good novel.
I don't know anything about publishing except for computer manuals and science fiction. Computer manuals are being slowly revolutionized, I think, by the Pragmatic Programmers (and their ~50% cut for authors, IIRC) and to a lesser extent O'Reilly.
In science fiction, the "middlemen" are perhaps slightly less exploitive than you suggest. The typical SF editor works in Manhattan for considerably less money than most of us make. The SF publishing houses, again, are not giant profit centers, and all but a few books generate modest profits. From where I'm standing, it's got "lifestyle business" written all over it.
Some authors, such as John Scalzi, are extremely happy to focus on writing, and not on contract negotiation, international sales, cover design, marketing, and so on. In economic terms, they're putting all of their working hours to the most profitable use, and farming everything else out to specialists. Or to put it in technology terms, they're like talented coders who dislike sales, marketing and management, and who just want to write code. Not everybody is an entrepreneur, including some people as business- and PR-savvy as Scalzi.
Plus, there are customers like me, who appreciate strong and talented editing. Karl Schroeder's novel Ventus had about 90,000 words cut from the second half at the recommendation of an editor, who said, roughly, The first half of the book is a lovely travelogue across a fascinating world; the second half is a mad race. You need to cut the travelogue stuff from the second half or you'll drive the reader nuts. By Schroeder's own admission, this advice improved the pace of the book tremendously.
Now, absolutely none of this is meant as a knock on people churning out penny-dreadful ebooks on the Kindle and making a killing. They're serving a real market need, and plenty of readers really want significant volume at an affordable price. In the military SF world, this need is mostly met by Baen's DRM-free webscriptions, which combine significant volume, low prices, and the occasional startlingly good novel.