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Is Print Going to Die?

June 18th, 2007 | poetry, publishing, reading

dead-books.jpgSeveral years ago, the National Endowment for the Arts warned America: Reading is at risk. They proclaimed that literary reading is declining rapidly among all groups, especially the very young.

Two weeks ago, in one of the breakout sessions at Book Expo America, Jeff Gomez wondered about that study. Is print really going to die? he asked. As the director of internet marketing for Holtzbrink Publishers, he has probably earned the authority to state his bold answer.

Print is dead.

Go to Writer… Interrupted to read the rest of this essay.

Viewing 6 Comments

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    Marcus -- I struggle with this whole subject a lot. For me, it usually boils down to how I'm spending my time. Do I write what I want -- which probably will never be sold? Or do I try to write for a particular market, still staying true to who I am, but writing more narrowly. I like how you probably relationship into this. If I just sit in my room and write with no context for readers to enter in, is it really writing worth my time?

    As you can see, even though I think about this a lot, I don't usually end up with many conclusions!
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    I tried to leave you a comment - but somehow, maybe because I was on a different computer - the whole setup seemed wrong and it said that "comment moderation" had been enabled. So, if you didn't actually get it, please let me know and I will see if I cand reconstruct it. It was a very interesting post!
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    I don't think so. I will probably always take a newspaper or magazine to the restroom. :)

    Something about an e-book on a PDA is intangible at times. Tactile reading offers greater retention and understanding for me.

    When I'm doing a serious edit on a document, it's amazing how much better (and faster at the same time) I am when I do it with a hard copy.

    How about you?
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    Charity, I agree completely. I'm a very social person, so writing long long projects alone is torturous. That's why I think more and more I am leaning toward performance writing like poetry and drama, and social writing like this blog.

    Susan, I have no idea where that comment went. Yesterday I was playing around with some new template options and you probably logged on right in the middle of my play time. I'm sure whatever you said was brilliant!

    Jesse, certainly the current form of eBooks does not work. And for editing, I always print documents and spread the pages across my desk. But editing is a unique kind of experience for me--hardly reading at all in some ways.

    I hear what you are saying about the newspaper, but honestly, if I had an affordable, foldable, flexible, 11x17 screen that allowed me to subscribe to 8 daily newspapers (and search them easily), I would never miss getting black ink all over my hands and face. That might sounds like science fiction, but I don't think it is too far off.
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    Hey, where'd you go? I don't see you and the kids here anymore. Boo hoo.
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    Gimme a bit. I'm doing some template work.

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