Are books dead, and can authors survive?

[Albert Rolls]

But more importantly, ebooks and e-publishing will mean the end of "the writer" as a profession. Ebooks, in the future, will be written by first-timers, by teams, by speciality subject enthusiasts and by those who were already established in the era of the paper book. The digital revolution will not emancipate writers or open up a new era of creativity, it will mean that writers offer up their work for next to nothing or for free. Writing, as a profession, will cease to exist.


Does that mean we are about to enter The Age of the Hack?


-----Original Message-----
>From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
>Sent: Oct 17, 2011 11:33 AM
>To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Are books dead, and can authors survive?
>
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/22/are-books-dead-ewan-morrison
>
>Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/technology/amazon-rewrites-the-rules-of-book-publishing.html