Are books dead, and can authors survive?

[Alex Colter]

I wish we could get past this silly argument, I'll bet most of the folks on
here do their reading snug with a printed page before them.
Books are not dead and neither is serious reading. Authors will survive as
they always have, on the fringes, they will find a way to keep writing even
if it means taking that lousy job, or going a little bit hungry, if they
cannot write in those conditions they were never cut out for it in the first
place.

Now, the bastardization of books....that's a whole different story...?



On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 4:36 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>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.
> >
>
> 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
>
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