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).
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