AcademHack takes a deliberately provocative approach to book publishing and academic publishing. I think he has it pretty much exactly right. I like his point that if you put your information behind a wall, it is not published, but private-ed.
I have published all of my academic papers on this site and have had hundreds of views of each. There are lots of papers on the topics I write on, but I'd be willing to bet that I am better read than many of the "experts". If the future belongs to those that show up, then the future of academic publishing belongs to those who get read, not just printed.