The End of Literary Agents?

It's revolutionary

A major UK publisher is apparently so impressed by the success of self-publishing, particularly in their field of SF/fantasy, that they are accepting author submissions.

GalleyCat reports that Tor UK has decided to accept direct submissions from writers, including writers outside the UK and authors who have previously self-published their work.
The straightforward author guidelines are now online. The publisher will only respond to submissions that interest the editors. They ask writers to assume that the editors have passed after twelve weeks without a response. Check it out:

For direct submissions we only consider complete and unpublished science fiction, fantasy and horror novels, written in English of between 95,000 – 150,000 words … We don’t publish non-fiction, poetry, short stories or novellas. If your work falls into any of these categories we regret we are unable to help. Only emailed submissions can be considered (please see below for the email address). The email must include the novel’s title in the Subject line. The body of the email should contain a short synopsis and biographical note (including details of any previously published work), and the entire novel should be attached to the email as a single standard word-processing file, preferably Microsoft Word.
 

Ironically, the page on GalleyCat with this intriguing item is headed with an advertisement from a literary agency that wants to hire an intern ...