Electronic publishing grows up

Since Gutenberg, publishing, both print and electronic, was in the control of publishers. Before the Internet, authors who could not get a publishing house to publish his or her works could resort to vanity presses. The early tools of the Internet did offer the first revolution in publishing, albeit quite crude compared with the electronic products offered by publishers. Now the Web offers anyone who knows how to use a huypertext markup language editor, and has the opportunity to mount a publicly accessible page, can publish a home page or even an entire site. Now that the Web has become the world's largest vanity press, do we still need traditional vanity press publishers? Will this sector of the publishing industry be the first casualty?