Are books dead, and can authors survive?

[Ian Livingston]

> 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.
>

I don't know of any example of anyone actually successfully predicting
future human events. Been a lot of claims, but all the evidence seems
flimsy and contrived. I'm waiting to see what happens, and, in the
meantime, I will continue to buy and read books.

On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Albert Rolls <alprolls at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 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
>
>



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant