Are books dead, and can authors survive?

[Joe Allonby]

I'm reminded of the critics of popular culture who thought that rock
'n' roll would kill jazz by replacing it as the dominant form in
musical mass entertainment. In fact, rock 'n' roll made jazz better by
allowing it to take its place as a serious art form as opposed to mere
dance music for the masses.

Bring on the hacks. Let them write dreck, or what we might think is
dreck. The bad stuff will fade in memory and the good stuff will
endure even if it was written on an iphone.



On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 6:39 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
>
>