Paul B. Hartzog, the editor of the very stimulating Panarchy site, which specializes in peer governance, recently published some interesting comments on the Corante blog.
Taking its clue from Cory Doctorow’s statement that the biggest problem for author’s is obscurity, not piracy, the entry examines how the dynamic of “publish, then select”, which replaces the mass media and publishing model of “select, then publish”, plays out in the field of science fiction, where the top 3 Hugo Awards were coincidentally given for free in ebook versions.

I recommend reading the whole entry, but here is a significant quote:

“Conversely, in the new system, the works are made available, and it is up to the community-at-large to pass judgement on their quality. In the emerging system, authors create and distribute their work, and readers, individually and collectively, including fans as well as editors and peers, review, comment, rank, and tag, everything. This is already happening at sites like LibraryThing and BooksWeLike.

In his 1998 book Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace, James O’Donnell predicted:

Peer review and stamp of approval will come after the fact of distribution and will exist as a way of helping identify high-quality work and work of interest to specific audiences.”