What is the future of books and writers?

[Lex]

Books are never going to go away. They will change. While I do believe pen and paper books will remain for years to come, a bulk of published books will be converted to eBooks. To me, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm a conusor of ideas. I don't care how ideas are expressed. I enjoy playing out a good story in the form of a video game, or watching it in a movie, or reading it in a book. I just like ideas.

Stories are also going to seem a little more plain to us who are more literate. I like Shakespeare as much as the next guy, but I do not live in Shakespeare's time. Newer books will reflect the whims of modern society. They always have. That won't change.

What I fear will change, is books will stop being honest. They will either go to the extreme of being overly controversial or overly simple or both.

We see it now. Rather than just trying to tell a story, a lot of authors get it in their mind that they have to prove a point, so they weave these really manipulative tales with obvious themes about saving the planet, or slavery or women's rights. They won't base these stories on any particular event or case study. In fact, they don't know anything about the particular topic, but decide they have a right to tell everyone else about it. So they make these overly simplistic and unrealistic and over all manipulative stories trying to make controversy. That has to stop. Or you get these authors that write these books, aimed at the lowest common denominator and they end up selling, even though they don't actually contain anything worthwhile.

That's what I fear.