The combination of kickstarter-like funding models complemented by transparent incremental development models (i.e. blog as you go to increase interest, release the finished product later, or construct a finished product from organic blog posts) certainly lowers the threshold substantially. More so, it increases the strength of monetary feedback to a degree that it becomes much more financially viable for writers to make a living off their works, especially for technical non-fiction. I'm very excited to see the tranformation of the writing profession that is upon us.