Thanks to friend Dirk for pointing me to this article by Jason Epstein, who has devoted much thought and much experience to this question.
Publishing: The Revolutionary Future - The New York Review of Books
We know he's right that the changes will be immense and will inevitably spawn new literary forms and new ways of filtering and modifying texts (what editors have done in print publishing). What we don't have yet is a model for compensating (paying) authors. I imagine that diverse systems will by invented, and some of them will survive better than others. For me personally, and all other authors who do not depend on writing income to survive, this won't be a serious issue; I wrote and published for pittances, and found other ways to make a living. For younger authors who want to write seriously and publish as I was able to do earlier in the previous print-publishing context, it is an issue.
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