The Future of Fiction?

Good question. I've noticed a trend in writing, growing over the past few decades, where writing is less praised for literary or stylistic merit and moreso for characterization and plot. I can also see fewer and shorter novels being written, since no one reads anymore...

Storytelling has been around since the dawn of mankind, and I expect it'll be with us until the end.

The only thing that really changes is the form in which the story is presented to its audience, from oral, to print, to back to oral (audio), to electronic.

The future of publishing will quite probably be a combination of all the existing forms, and how that changes the industry remains to be seen.

But a good story will always have an audience.

geologism said:

I can also see fewer and shorter novels being written, since no one reads anymore...

Click to expand...

No one reads anymore? You better tell that to JK Rowling. It will make her feel guilty about those millions of people buying her books to use as door stops. ;-)

Heck, even I've sold over 100K books. Hopefully people aren't just buying them to burn them in effigy!

Seriously, this topic pops up every few months. Books will be around in one form or another for many years to come.

I think books will be around plenty. Maybe the medium will change. E-books might become outrageously popular, but that's still the same story. Only not on paper.

Also, I see a huge trend in movies to jack the plot lines of books. I sense it's happening more and more. I don't know why. Maybe it's easier to adapt a story to screenplay than it is to write a story as a screenplay.

As long as there is an audience. We'll have need for writers. And publishing in some format.

i wouldn't necessarily start closing barnes and nobles across the country just yet. despite some very real e-reading going on, there's no denying people have a bond with physical books.

i'm curious if people were saying the same thing about newspapers when radios were becoming popular. then said it about radios when television was expanding.

books aren't songs. i imagine (based purely on knee-jerk reaction here) that ipods and the like put a serious dent in cd sales. i don't think it's a fair comparison, though (besides, anyone really into sound quality would want the cd). sorry, but i highly doubt the majority of readers will want to read a novel on their cell phones, not that that's not possible.

i think publishers will be the ones who really push for e-books, honestly. you save a few bucks, but it's probably very close to the same profit margin for them as they don't have to make corporeal books. plus, i imagine with some pretty easy anti-theft programming (just guessing here, i'd personally never read a book on screen unless i had to), you get one person reading it, not reading it and passing the book around to four people before the pages fall out. and it's like anything else, they start their prices off low to get people suckered into it and used to it, then, kapow, prices go up. remember how using your ATM used to be free when it first came out?

ask any romance reader and they'll tell you it's a pain to read off a laptop in the bathtub.

Ebooks still don't feel right to me and I'm an online kind of guy. (Had a web site since 1994 -- yes I am a geek. Heck my first book started as an ebook and now is in kindle format.) So I imagine it will be a while before the general public and publishers embrace them. (Actually you can't embrace them because there is nothing to embrace....) Even my son who grew up on a computer prefers to read paper books.

Nothing will change.

I throw this out because I have not seen any data other than percentages. Is it possible the declining % of those who read fiction from tactile books may have nothing to do with the raw numbers of those who do? In other words, although there may be 300,000,000 Americans, the number of those who read traditionally may be relatively constant and little different from our population when it was 200,000,000.

However, I will concede this point. Adults I knew in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, many with less than a high school education, were more voracious and discriminating readers than many of the younger college grads I know today.

www.donaldmichaelplatt.com

I think there are more people than ever before so more potential readers but there are also a lot more options for people reading so we can break even.

I think everything goes in cycle. Look at cinema -- it goes from gritty to romantic to gritty again then back to romantic... there are many styles for many people. Some prefer a David Lean movie and some Easy Riders. The idea of storytelling, no matter the form, remains similar: send your audiences to some world. Whether it's plot or character or language, the best storytelling always work on multiple levels. That is not going to change.

I am sorry, but the books have all been recalled. They were printed in China, and had lead in the covers.

sci-fi time: ipod devices that hold your book and plug into special glasses that print the words on the lenses. or an exact replica of a book in weight and feel that's got programmable pages.

it would be terribly easy to make a paperback-size screen for people to take their 'books' with them anywhere they go. downloading the book would be likewise an easy task. right now they make devices that are able to plug into your satellite receiver and download everything you've got saved in your DVR into a portable tv screen-dealie. i reckon it would be a lot like that, except with different options like print size and background colour, probably with 'special features' as you might find on a DVD. it would have a little video interview with the author, deleted scenes, alternate artwork that kind of thing. oh, and advertising. everything's got to have an advert attached. it's the law, apparently. i'm half surprised coke doesn't advertise pepsi on their bottles.

so, you build a relatively easy to manufacture, sturdy product specifically for book readers, offer them options and special features, a password screen to deter theft, never lose your place, and you're able to read the books at a substantial savings, and why wouldn't everyone be into that? i guess for the same reason doing jigsaw puzzles on the computers suck: sure, after you're done, you get to explore the interior of the puzzle (as i was able to do with the cathedral i'd put together), learn some history, see some pictures, had a lot of options, and it didn't take up any room and i never lost a piece.

it's rather weird, isn't it, that you could make e-books the most entertaining things possible with all sorts of bells and whistles pitched in for good measure, and *still* people will prefer the actual book.

geologism said:

I can also see fewer and shorter novels being written, since no one reads anymore...

Click to expand...

I don't believe this is true.

Throw out certain genres that demand particular lengths: series romance, epic fantasy, etc. If you look at other kinds of novels, high-concept thrillers for instance (those that sit at the tops of bestseller lists, usually: Dan Brown, Vince Flynn, David Baldacci, etc. etc.), you're seeing longer novels now than ever before. Rarely do you see anything in this genre -- or really in any commercial genre, from spy thrillers to staid marital dramas set in the Midwest -- check in at under 95,000 words and 400+ pages. Just like in film, the trend in fiction is to go big.

Unfortunately, this bloating of the word count and page number has decreased the effectiveness of many novels. I can't tell you how many books I've read in the past couple of years that are 100 pages too long. But that's a story for another thread, probably...

I am not sure that novels will get shorter, but I think that chapters will. Many popular novels have more than a hundred chapters, each of which is 2 or 3 pages long.

Prawn said:

I am not sure that novels will get shorter, but I think that chapters will. Many popular novels have more than a hundred chapters, each of which is 2 or 3 pages long.

Click to expand...

Not only chapters, but also paragraphs. I picked up a Nelson DeMille the other day, and the paragraphs were an average of about four sentences. Many of them checked in at two.

Perfect plane reading, I guess.

Prawn said:

I am sorry, but the books have all been recalled. They were printed in China, and had lead in the covers.

Click to expand...

Oh crap! And I always lick the books I love the most.

just an aside, but several years ago it had been noted that movies were getting longer on average. i assume part of that is giving the audience a supposed better value for their expensive theatre outting.

if novels are getting shorter, perhaps that can be attributed to a specific publisher or *kind* of publisher, i.e. a small fry trying to keep production costs down. ?? if you maximized your space in every way, i don't know how many pages you'd save, but if you saved ten cents of paper, that adds up fast if you've got to pay for ten thousand books (that would be a thousand dollar saving, in case you're not good with math like me). so, i have to ask, will it be 'shorter' in terms of content or page count?

Interesting post. I have to say, as an extremely slow reader who wants to read every book on the planet, I love shorter books. I seriously have a slow road reading...my 12 year old son can read probably twice as fast as me. My wife says it's because I read differently than everybody else. I actually read every single word and I stop to ingest beautiful sentences and re-read, etc. I just love shorter books and I will pick them up first...I definitely purchase more of them too.

With technology; most people wil tell you that they don't want to read e-books, that they would much rather read and touch paper books.
Audio books are fine by me and the publishers are still going to need novelists to write the words for audio books, yes?

Education; uneducated people read and write too, just because someone doesn't have any qualifications/phds, doesn't automatically make them stupid.

Immigration? I certainly don't get this part at all? Don't you think that 'foreigners' like to read and write books too? Not every writer in the world came from an English speaking land. Alexandre Dumas, to name but one. the Bible wasn't originally written in English either, it was in Hebrew, wasn't it.


Elodie

TomBerkeley said:

But given all the dynamics at play in technology and education and immigration, etc. What do you think the future of the novel will be?Thanks,Tom

Click to expand...

To me, listening to a book and reading it are two very different things. I don't like listening to books -- I prefer reading it.

I don't mind reading e-Books, and I think the new e-book readers are not there yet, but in the right direction.

could be such a thing that we don't even have a choice, or a limited one at best. remember how they phased out video cassettes for DVD's? would it happen? i doubt it, but, hey, never say never. we could be one nut-ball tree-huggin' politician away from putting a moritorium on using new paper manufactured in certain countries. i'm just making this up, of course, just that we're a few ralph naders short of huge changes to our lifestyles. (don't worry, you'll be paying the same in taxes. in fact, it's a cinch you'll be paying more.)

until you can lay down on your couch and change positions without dropping your expensive laptop, i think books are here to stay. plus, i'm not crazy about the idea of having to restart the programme after reading a few pages and having to set it down for something else.

besides, what would libraries do if they didn't have books? add more computers? have a blow-out sale and close up? that would be a good way to keep americans educated like the politicians are always saying, huh?

preyer said:

until you can lay down on your couch and change positions without dropping your expensive laptop, i think books are here to stay. plus, i'm not crazy about the idea of having to restart the programme after reading a few pages and having to set it down for something else.

Click to expand...

Laptops?

Have you seen the new e-book readers lately? They're actually pretty cool and sturdy (meaning, you can really drop them). Minimal start-up time as well.

I saw this new book reader thingy on Ellen the other day. (Okay...I have the hots for Ellen...so shut up! I'm a dish eater, what can I say!) It looks like a book. It's actually shaped like a book and you load books into it. It looks like a half-cracked book...the way you would have it open if you're reading it...amazing!

Still...I don't think I'd get it. I love paper books. I love them.