I find its quite reliant on where you see you are going and where you want to go in your career path. Working as a commercial photographer itself is not easy, and since photography is so easily available nowadays, it does not take skill and creativity as the main intangible asset to emerge among the rest. Business sense is more important nowadays and many service providers hinge on value more than product quality. It's crappy but true.
As piss-funny as HM's Autobiog is, the industry has changed SO much since he wrote it that it's kinda irrelevant. Many of us wish we were living in those times but frankly...
Negotiating the right price and copyright issues are still pretty much similar, the grounds of copywrites might be more broad since the internet. I still find some of the stuff in HM's memoir relevant. Unless you have an agent to negotiate for you, lots of deals are still made directly between artists and clients. It's all negotiations in the end.
