Do Writers Need Managers?

The publishing industry got a nice news story yesterday when J.K. Rowling, the world's first billionaire novelist of Harry Potter fame, canned her agent of sixteen years, Christopher Little, right before the premiere of the final film. Mr. Little was responsible for taking the no-name, broke, single mother to the top by marketing her and her work to publishers and studios every step of the way. I am sure there are a multitude of reasons why this occurred, but through a chain reaction of thoughts, I arrived with the question, "Could she have done it without him?" According to what I have read, probably not.
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