Quote:
Originally Posted by David Derrico
Well, you're probably right that reading as a whole is on the decline and that people are moving to the Internet and movies and music and TV and Twitter instead of books. But, I don't think that (as the OP asks) e-books will spell the end of great writing. Could all these alternative forms of entertainment hurt writing? Certainly, and they probably already have. But I think e-books will help, not hurt (I think it will better appeal to a younger generation that is used to consuming media electronically).
|
I don't think it's quite a case of reading being on the decline.
A bigger problem is that many folks never learned to consider reading "fun". Reading is a chore they were forced to learn and do because they have to.
I think of the children of an old friend. Dad was a voracious reader, though Mom wasn't, but Dad came home from the office and plunked himself in front of the TV till dinner was ready. Guess what the kids did? (I watched the older one literally go into a trance when the TV was turned on.) Mom and Dad never set the example when the kids were little that reading was fun and something you did for recreation.
At dinner with a group of folks at an SF convention years back, the conversation turned to declining literacy. I asked "How many of you had parents who read to you when you were kids?"
Every hand was raised. My mother read to me as a child, and told me later I had the idea well before I could do it myself. She'd try to fast forward through what she was reading to got me to sleep and get on to chores, and I'd say "No, Mommy! You skipped
this part!", pointing unerringly at the section she'd skipped over. I don't really remember
not knowing how to read, and always read anything that didn't read me first (and a fair bit that did.) I know where I got the habit.
Quote:
And I do know how badly the odds are stacked against writers even making a living, let alone for independent authors. But, I'm happy to say that I'm much closer to that goal now than a few years ago when e-books were just a blip on the radar. At least now I have some hope.  
|
I think first, you must simply want to do it, whether or not you get recompensed. The act of writing must be its own reward. Whether or not you can get paid for it may determine how much time you can put into it, but not whether you do it at all.
(The late Isaac Asimov once recounted his first wife's displeasure when he took a typewriter along on vacation. She never seemed to understand that he
had to write, and wasn't happy if he didn't do it every day.)
But yes, the growing awareness of ebooks, and the Internet as a distribution medium are making it at least
possible to make money doing it, even if still unlikely.
______
Dennis