Will Ink on Paper Survive?
I confess. I’m a baby boomer swayed by nostalgia. I associate writers with images of old typewriters even though I never used one. Like Florida author, Michael Gannon, I scribble my novels in notebooks. Interviewed recently in the St.Petersburg Times, Gannon said about writing on paper: ”I can feel the words going from my mind to the page better. I can feel the rhythms of the words and the pacing of the sentences I can’t feel when tapping on keys.” I relate to that. Notebooks, like sketchbooks, have been a part of my life since early childhood. They don’t need recharging and they don’t feed on batteries that become toxic waste.
This month at the SCBWI conference in Orlando, the buzz at the lunch table surrounded a Florida high school’s intent to replace textbooks with E-Readers. Most middle-aged writers I know accept the inevitability of cyber publication and marketing with knuckle-biting resignation. I don’t own an electronic reader and shudder to think printed versions of books may become relics. Will there be a funeral to honor their passing? Will libraries become dusty museums with snoring docents at the door?
Garrison Keillor’s recent article in the New York Times mourns the end of a publishing era. He fears the market will be flooded with self-published electronic books, making it hard for readers to find the needles in the haystack … books by reputable authors. Many in the publishing industry dispute that, claiming readers will sift through the chaff. Editors and agents have every right to defend the electronic trend. They’re fighting to remain relevant.
This may seem like a new discussion but an introduction to Italo Calvino’s 1979 book, If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler, claims the book is ” its author’s triumphant response to the question of whether the art of fiction could survive the vast changes taking place in the communications technology of our world.” Was Calvino seeing the end of print books forty years ago?
Did you hear that? Was it the sound of the last pages turning?
