Well here are my comments, take them or leave them, and are based purely on comments made as I have not read the article either.  People have gone out of business just like people in other businesses go out of business when they fail to have a future plan in place.  The ones that I know went out of business, performed one function such as document retrieval only.  Sure they were hit and hit hard because they never had a future plan.  Abstracting is still necessary and if proper direction is made, perhaps could be more profitable than before. 

As I stated, marketing efforts should change to enable this.  It takes a real business person to achieve these goals.  It used to be someone said "I want to be an abstractor" and called up VMs and they were in business.  They didn't think past that with future plans for business and expansion.  That is why they failed.  True abstracting businesses allow for growth, not only financial but personal growth, the ability to grow, change, and relate with people and companies under any condition.  The ability to relate with people without becoming irrational over little irritations which would ultimately be the demise of the smallest abstractor to the largest company.  

I have been through the same thoughts of alot of you, but only for a moment.  I chose to not focus on the negative but focus on what is still marketable out there.  We are expanding into notary closings, inspections, etc - there is nothing wrong with that - it is changing as the market changes.  It is providing more full-services, nothing wrong with that - the VMs didn't say we are no longer VMs cause we are full-service now. 

Along with all these changes, opened up another opportunity for us - to go directly to the banks and savings institutions.  It is being done, and with E&O in your lap, they are going directly to the abstractors for lien searches, document retrievals, and current owners when they don't want a title policy.  It is an advantage in your hands to indicate the fact that you will be at the courthouse, not online doing their searches, that they cannot guarantee right now the VMs they are sending the work to are.  That you are an expertise in the records in your area, you know the little quirks of the county indexes, the different computers located within the courthouse and not online that need to be accessed to complete your searches properly.

If you are able to be proficient at easement and rights-of-way restrictions and easements, you can always be employed.  Direct your marketing towards governmental agencies and corporations.  Everyone local is the best way to go - but don't exclude the nationwide companies - just don't depend on them totally.  I work for alot of nationwide companies and enjoy working for them.  Of course, to me the ones that are my clients are ones that don't want the online searching- I guess that makes a difference.  Maybe they were  the first to find out they aren't so reliable - I don't know.

Just have a plan - see what direction everyone is going and figure out what they haven't achieved yet - make that your plan.  I don't think we need to stop trying to get records offline because it has certainly had a terrible effect on the lives and security of the American citizens - but to continue to focus on the negativity of the abstractor's future will certainly bring demise to our occupation.  I chose to find other ways of marketing and using technology to my advantage. 

One of our first and foremost problems is you have to stop worrying about what the other one charges, if you need more money to operate your business, then raise your prices.  There is a difference between abstracting company to abstracting company, seen it time and time again - don't let anyone talk you into anything different.  Just be the difference and go forward.