Steven Brust's LJ (RSS Feed)
06-11-2008, 12:59 AM
Elizabeth Bear (http://matociquala.livejournal.com/) linked to this article (http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2008/06/09/top_writers_feel_heat_from_publishers_presses/) in her blog today about how the top authors feel pressure from their publishers to produce a book a year. I don’t have any issue with the main thrust of the article, but what interests me is the first sentence.
In an age when reading for pleasure is declining, book publishers increasingly are counting on their biggest moneymaking writers to crank out books at a rate of at least one a year, right on schedule, and sometimes faster than that. [emphasis mine]
You hear this a lot — and it is almost never backed up with evidence. In an age of video games, television, dvds, and the internet, books are dying out. And yet we also live in an age when those same books are advertised heavily on that same television and intertubes. We live in a post-Harry Potter era, where millions of children were introduced to the joy of reading through the adventures of the Hogwarts kids.* The debate over bookwarez (http://futurismic.com/2008/06/10/writing-and-piracy-stoddard-pops-pogues-balloon/) is heating up, suggesting many are just as interested in pirating the latest bestseller or computer manual as they are the latest album or first person shooter.
Steve tells me that about ten years ago, when the media were still blithely spouting this same bit of “common knowledge” — that the book is dying — Tom Doherty was a guest at Fourth Street Fantasy Convention (http://www.4thstreetfantasy.com/), he shared his own research which suggested that book reading was increasing slightly over time.
Does anyone have any recent evidence, statistical or anecdotal, to suggest whether book reading is waxing or waning?
(Originally posted at Words Words Words (http://dreamcafe.com/words/2008/06/10/reading-is-decreasing/) by kit. Please leave any comments (http://dreamcafe.com/words/2008/06/10/reading-is-decreasing/#comments) there.)
(Original Post) (http://skzbrust.livejournal.com/89774.html)
In an age when reading for pleasure is declining, book publishers increasingly are counting on their biggest moneymaking writers to crank out books at a rate of at least one a year, right on schedule, and sometimes faster than that. [emphasis mine]
You hear this a lot — and it is almost never backed up with evidence. In an age of video games, television, dvds, and the internet, books are dying out. And yet we also live in an age when those same books are advertised heavily on that same television and intertubes. We live in a post-Harry Potter era, where millions of children were introduced to the joy of reading through the adventures of the Hogwarts kids.* The debate over bookwarez (http://futurismic.com/2008/06/10/writing-and-piracy-stoddard-pops-pogues-balloon/) is heating up, suggesting many are just as interested in pirating the latest bestseller or computer manual as they are the latest album or first person shooter.
Steve tells me that about ten years ago, when the media were still blithely spouting this same bit of “common knowledge” — that the book is dying — Tom Doherty was a guest at Fourth Street Fantasy Convention (http://www.4thstreetfantasy.com/), he shared his own research which suggested that book reading was increasing slightly over time.
Does anyone have any recent evidence, statistical or anecdotal, to suggest whether book reading is waxing or waning?
(Originally posted at Words Words Words (http://dreamcafe.com/words/2008/06/10/reading-is-decreasing/) by kit. Please leave any comments (http://dreamcafe.com/words/2008/06/10/reading-is-decreasing/#comments) there.)
(Original Post) (http://skzbrust.livejournal.com/89774.html)