Will the Digital Era Change Writing?
The rock album is dying, with digital services letting music fans cherry-pick individual songs they like. But will something similar happen to writing? Is the novel endangered by slice-and-dice nature of the Web?
Interesting article from the WSJ comparing the Future of Books to the Present of Music.
My take:
Most non-fiction is better presented in the form of shorter essays. Large business books are almost always unnecessary, and the real content in them could be synthesized into a 5-page piece. Perhaps, the Novel form of books will survive, but all the rest of the book genres will come under tremendous threat by the digital age, as micro-content distribution becomes mainstream.
The book will certainly survive, but the size of the print publishing industry will probably lose a great deal of ground to the digital format.
[…] business needs to / is going to change because of the web. [Book Publishing Moves West? . Will the Digital Era Change Writing? . eBooks Future]. In this interview, I speak with Eileen Gittins, CEO of Blurb, who is attempting […]
[…] business needs to / is going to change because of the web. [Book Publishing Moves West? . Will the Digital Era Change Writing? . eBooks Future]. In this interview, I speak with Eileen Gittins, CEO of Blurb, who is attempting […]