Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Without commercial success to count on, not only will you see fewer writers, but you'll see less of a support base for them, i.e., editors, proofers, printers, artists, etc... so you'll get a much less polished product. There may be plenty of e-books, but if they have ugly (or no) covers, and read as if they were written by grade-schoolers... who will want to read them?
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The recent years have just shown an explosion of titles p, e, whatever so I doubt profoundly there will be a decrease in the number of titles soon.
Regarding quality, that is something that history will decide, but again I doubt this era will be remembered at tons of titles but zero merit
Regarding artists, proofers and such, again digital art enabled lots and lots of new sff artists to produce since after all you may have a vision in your mind's eye but lack the technical skills to paint it, while using digital tools you can do it. Check the annual Spectrum books for example which have some of the most interesting sff art out there
So again to me is mind boggling to have all this doom and gloom projections
Personally I think that the only predictor of the amount of books written is societal wealth so as long as the US and Europe remain wealthy there will be enough books written, the ones that find their audience will generate revenue and so on...