The other day a student asked me a question. Very quiet kid, been in my classes for 2 years, and 95% of his contributions have been smiling and nodding. Then, with no context, he asked me, “What do you think is going to happen to books?”
I had many responses, but asked him to elaborate, and he said it just seemed – to him – that people were reading less and less; but more than that, books themselves were getting shorter and, well, dumber.
And the evidence certainly bears him out. It can be easy to doomsday during times of change, but as we fragment more and more in the age of Internet and social media, it’s very easy to see not just the reading of “Literature with a Capital L” becoming a niche activity, but reading itself.
The publishing industry had already evolved to a more and more purely capitalist environment, but Covid seems to have scorched much anything different that remained, and that’s never good news for literary voices. But, specifically, books are getting shorter, unless they’re by established properties. Traditional word count for a novel is 70-120 thousand words. Very few agents and publishers will even look at one over 100,000 now. Some want a maximum of 70,000.
The flip-side of that, of course is that we seem to be rapidly expanding our acceptance of what constitutes literature. 35 years ago, if you asked if a comic could be literature, you’ve would have gotten a mention of Watchmen and Maus, but that’s about it. The list – and possibilities – now seems to be expanding exponentially.
And, of course, with this Internet-damage comes unprecedented possibilities with self-publishing, along with a slow erosion of the stigma that comes with it.
My response to my student was a bit dour. I really should have just said, “Something.” Because stories are as old as humanity. One could reasonably argue that stories are one of the essential pieces that make us human. And things look bleak, but as any good book will show you, the story is only a piece of a much larger narrative. The book is never complete without the reader, and the story is never complete so long as we keep telling it, however we’re able.
The Byronic Man 
June 12, 2023 at 12:21 pm
Yes.
June 13, 2023 at 7:14 am
Wow! That’s quite the question and I have to say how impressed I am that it was asked in your class. The fact that a young person is aware and can see the decline is comforting to me. As a not so young person, who has 60+ years of devouring print when ever possible, witnessing what is happening to the written word (including the banning of books) seemed to be a generational thing. I am glad it’s not.
June 13, 2023 at 9:10 am
Well, I’d love to say that his question was representational… but… There are certainly still readers, but there are also more and more people who defiantly boast “I don’t read” and will opt to fail a unit rather than read a book; any book. That’s not common, but it’s becoming a thing you have to anticipate. It’s a strange thing to feel like challenging literature, or classics, is out of the question for many students. That it’s just the hope that they can slow down enough to just read a book at all
June 13, 2023 at 9:46 am
I am grateful people like you who take up the challenge. I have to believe there is hope for the written word.
June 14, 2023 at 1:04 pm
Hello. In the face of social media and gaming and 10,000 times more series and movies to watch than there used to be, book-reading is in trouble, I’m sure.
June 17, 2023 at 2:08 am
A great philosophical question! The introverts are deep thinkers! The youth of today don’t like reading. They are addicted to social media.