An interesting experiment testing literary agents and publishers

This article is a story about an interesting experiment where a researcher took a famous book, changed the title and character names, and then tried to see if there was interest to publish it.

It would seem that the ultimate conclusion is that the filters in place to decide what is commercially viable to publish are imperfect, at best, and also do not screen for the actual worth of a work. But then I'm sure people already knew that, given the stories of many famous writers who only got published after dozens of rejections.

I wonder though, whether this will matter as much in an age of self-publication. Right now, anyone in the entire world can read what I've written here, and basically for free. Once there exists a cheap way (like a cheap tablet-like computer) to download content into something you can easily hold in bed (or elsewhere...) then the age of published paper books will truly start to draw to a close...