Print on Demand technology breathing new life into old books and encouraging self-publishing

The book world is still wary of the whole 'digitisation' process. From the arguments over Googles scanning project, to dire predictions that the day of the book is numbered, all we seem to hear are doom and gloom scenarios.
But so far, what has really have been born out of digitisation? It isn't the manufacture of hand-held 'electronic books readers'; even audio books, while increasing their share of the market, have yet to put a real dent on book sales. The only industry to have really benefited from digitisation is Print-on-demand - a means of publishing an otherwise non-economic title by scaling down the costs substantially.
Print on demand has obvious advantages for the publishing industry in that out of print titles can be produced relatively cheaply or professionally produced review copies can be printed ahead of the main print run for publicity purposes.
But to me, the one thing that the mushrooming of the print-on-demand shows us is that there is still, and will always be, a huge demand for paper books.
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