If the worst comes true, and the paper book joins the papyrus scroll and parchment codex in extinction, we will miss, I predict, a number of things about it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.
I can't believe there will ever be a time when the book is truly obsolete. It is the perfect technology and feeds the soul.
It's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written.
I can't predict how reading habits will change. But I will say that the greatest loss is the paper archive - no more a great stack of manuscripts, letters, and notebooks from a writer's life, but only a tiny pile of disks, little plastic cookies where once were calligraphic marvels.
Very wonderful books might be published, and very terrible books might be published.
I don't know how the editors are going to take it or how it may be received. But to some extent I'm hoping that with the next book, when people pick it up and read it, it will scare the pants off of them.
I hate those e-books. They cannot be the future. They may well be.
All I hope, selfishly, is that there will be real books until the day I draw my last breath.
Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
I like a book better if I can't predict what's going to happen.