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.