Is the (paper) book dead? What is its fate? Will writers survive? Will the next generation read?
And if so, which platform/reader will they use? These questions, along with related topics (blogging, how to promote your book using social media etc.) were hot panel topics at the book festivals I recently attended, rivalling the staples such as the fiction non/fiction divide and how to turn your own experiences into a story. Writers and other professionals dissected trends, ranted, doubted, pronounced, prevaricated, eulogised. Some said, Fear not: surf the digital tsunami, open yourself to the opportunities and creative potential of the medium – one way or another, stories are our lifeblood and they will evolve and survive. Others said, Beware: writers and readers are being being dumbed-down and forced into a model of production and consumption which suits manufacturers and distributors, rather than bodies and minds… Perhaps, some suggested, the way out of this techno-tangle is to regenerate our oral traditions – perhaps the internet will even help us do so? Actually, others insisted, it’s both: Fear not and Beware, simultaneously.
After a few days of this, my feeling (and yes, my newer titles will soon be e-books, but no, I don’t yet have a reader: ipad, too heavy; Kobo, too tacky; Kindle, better – but still, like all of them, too stiff, and too expensive)… My feeling is that this dizzying blend of excitement and anxiety, this concern with the mechanics and balance sheet of the book, not the book itself, not what is inside it, is More: book art, and the happy man
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