Skip to main content

The Future of Books



What will books look like 50 years from now? We have seen quite a change in the way books are read in the past 15 years or so. More and more people are reading with ereaders of one brand or another.  When my novel came out this summer, the ebook came out first with the paperback to come out in October. It wasn’t my choice; that’s the way the publisher wanted to do it, and  that was okay. But a lot of my friends told me that they would be waiting for the paperback. “I just can’t read on one of those things,” I heard over and over. That is fine with me. I just want people to read my book. I don’t care how they read it.

There are certainly advantages to ebooks over conventional books. They are less expensive. One device can carry hundreds of books. On the other hand, I find, and I know there are others who will agree with me, that paper books are easier on the eyes. Nevertheless, this may be viewed as a generational divide as I suspect ebooks are more likely to be favored by younger readers.  If that’s the case in 50 years when all of the older generation is gone one would think that would also be the end of the traditional book.  Perhaps. Or perhaps people will quit reading altogether and simply listen to audio books. Or perhaps there will be some other technology. Perhaps people of that time will simply take a pill and all the words will just be absorbed into their brains.

50 years ago if you had asked anyone what they thought about the possibility of electronic books they would have told you that they already had electronic books, they were called movies and television. It is hard to predict how technology will change the future. People have been trying to do it for decades and, with a few exceptions, the results are not good. People either can’t imagine change and assume things will stay pretty much the same, or they over-predict (We will have colonies on the Moon and Mars by 1990!)

So with poor track record of predictions in mind, let me predict some things about books in 2068. First: I probably won’t be reading anything by then. Second: I think there will still be people who like to read physical pages. Perhaps those pages won't be on paper, maybe they will be on some other yet to be invented material. And they may not be the majority of book readers. It may be relegated to the few quirky people like me who like to use chopsticks in Chinese restaurants, or people who like to learn Latin, just because. Third: I expect audiobooks will gain a larger share of the market, perhaps even the largest. Not just because of the convenience while doing other tasks, but because people are lazy and getting lazier. They are always looking for ways to get out of doing . . . well anything really. Technology has gradually made life easier over the past 200 years. But in the past 30 years it has accelerated and we increasingly find ourselves being glued to a screen of some sort. You are reading this blog on a screen now. I typed this on a computer. I remember writing stories on a typewriter and even writing things in long-hand. Don’t get me wrong, it’s much easier now (please don't sent me back to writing on a manual typewriter!) But maybe that’s the point, everything is easier now. Maybe we want everything to be too easy.

Anyway, I hope printed books are around 50 years from now. To me it lends a sense of connectedness when you are touching the printed page. Whatever form they are in, books will survive. There will always be something magical about being carried away with a story aided by your own imagination.

(My novel Star Liner, is now available as an ebook through Copypastapublishing.com, or the other usual online sources. For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback will be out in October).


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Child of the . . .

  What was it like to grow up as a child in the 90s? How about the 1940’s? Thinking about a child growing up in each different decade, conjures up images in my mind. But that is all they are: images. I was a child in the 1960’s. I can tell you what it felt like to be growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, but what it felt like to me is not what the history books remember. History will tell you the 60’s was about the Viet Nam War, civil rights, and the space race. The 70’s was Disco and Watergate. I remember being aware of all of those things, but to me this era was about finding time to play with my friends, something I probably share with a child of any decade. It was about navigating the social intricacies of school.   It was about the Beatles, Three Dog Night, The Moody Blues, The Animals, Jefferson Airplane. It was Bullwinkle, the Wonderful World of Color, and Ed Sullivan. There are things that a kid pays attention to that the grown-ups don’t. Then there are things the adults ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bureaucrats

  I am one of those nameless, faceless bureaucrats. Yes, that is my job. Though I actually have a name; I even am rumored to have a face. Bureau is the French word for desk, so you could say bureaucrats are “desk people.” In short, I work for the government. I sometimes have to deliver unpleasant news to a taxpayer. I sometimes have to tell them that the deed they recorded won’t work and they will have to record another one with corrections. Or we can’t process their deed until they pay their taxes. I can understand why some of these things upset people. The thing is, we don’t decide these things. It is not the bureaucrats that make the laws. The legislature writes the laws. We are required to follow the law.   If you are going to get mad at someone, get mad at the legislature. Or maybe get mad at the voters who voted the legislature in (That’s you, by the way). The same thing happens when the voters vote in a new district, or vote for a bond, or a new operating levy for an ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Telephonicus domesticus

Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone from 1877 bears about as much similarity to the modern smart phone as an abacus bears to a PC or Mac. There are just about as many leaps in technology in both cases. It’s funny how a major jump in technology happens (like the actual invention of the phone). Then there are some refinements over a few years or decades until it gets to a useful stable form. Then it stays virtually the same for many years with only minor innovations. The telephone was virtually unchanged from sometime before I was born until I was about forty. Push-buttons were replacing the rotary dial, but that was about it. (Isn’t it interesting though that when we call someone, we still call it “dialing?” I have never seen a dial on a cell phone.) Cell phones were introduced and (once they became cheap enough) they changed the way we phone each other. New advancements followed soon after, texting and then smart phones. Personal computers were also becoming commonplace and wer...
Post a Comment
Read more