It is happening (I recently got a kickstarted atlas of Mars - how fricking cool is that?!). But then the authors also have to do their own marketing and promotion, another care taken over by the publishers for these few authors.
And editing. Good editing can be very important. There's a lot of "R&D" work being done by publishers, I don't think it's fair to equate them to a glorified kickstarter. Same goes for music studios and movie producers. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
