What's Happening to the Novel's Future?

The news is saying that the novel is DEAD!!

I read reports that say the novel is dead. What? How can that be? I am still buying them and racking up the $$ on my Visa; aren't you? I mean any "readoholic" is doing the same. And who doesn't love book stores? It just is not the same to use a cell phone to read a book or download it onto the computer. I need that warm and fuzzy feeling I get in a book store. I also need the scones they have there!!

It's no secret that the number of independent bookstores is on the wane. And even big chain stores like Borders are having trouble. Scott Karp, who writes the Publishing 2.0 blog, predicted bookstores would be obsolete in 10 years. That was last year, so we apparently have just nine years left.

Is it time to write the novel's obituary?
More recently, author Richard Laermer wrote that book publishing is dead because editors are too young (oh, please), books are too expensive (maybe), and the publishing industry publishes too many books and spends too much marketing books that don't need it, and not enough on books that do (I'm inclined to agree). Also, the industry generally moves too slowly (I'd second that).

With dying bookstores and publishers, what future is there for the novel?

I predict it will be around for a long time, although maybe not necessarily in the form we're used to.

Though publishers might have to find new ways to make money and structure deals, people have loved novels far too long for them to vanish.A Scholastic project called "The 39 Clues" is already out. This is a 10-book mystery series about the powerful Cahill family; each book is said to unlock one clue (I'm a little worried about the math, given that there aren't 39 books in the series). "Book 1: The Maze of Bones" was written by Rick Riordan, the author of the wildly popular Percy Jackson series. It's likely this will be big with kids. I sure want to read them.

In the most important ways, the future of the novel looks great. People still love writing them, even if they're doing it in their spare time on cell phones, as did the best-selling Japanese novelist. People also still love reading them, as evidenced by the bake sales they'll hold to buy more.

If publishers can't figure out how to make a profit on the novel, that's their problem -- and another story entirely.

What's in a Story?

Every novel is a long, involved, fictitious story that is intended to entertain or instruct the reader. In order to better understand a novel one should understand that it starets with a setting adds charachters and then gets into a plot.





One viewer has decided that women are the readers. A couple of years ago, British author Ian McEwan conducted an admittedly unscientific experiment. He and his son waded into the lunch-time crowds at a London park and began handing out free books. Within a few minutes, they had given away 30 novels.



Nearly all of the takers were women, who were "eager and grateful" for the freebies while the men "frowned in suspicion, or distaste." The inevitable conclusion, wrote McEwan in The Guardian newspaper: "When women stop reading, the novel will be dead."



McEwan's prognosis is surely hyperbole, but only slightly. Surveys consistently find that women read more books than men, especially fiction. Explanations abound, from the biological differences between the male and female brains, to the way that boys and girls are introduced to reading at a young age.



One thing is certain: Americans—of either gender—are reading fewer books today than in the past. A poll released by The Associated Press and Ipsos, a market-research firm, found that the typical American read only four books last year, and one in four adults read no books at all.
A National Endowment for the Arts report found that only 57 percent of Americans had read a book in 2002 a four percentage-point drop in a decade. Book sales have been flat in recent years and are expected to stay that way for the foreseeable future.



Among avid readers surveyed by the AP, the typical woman read nine books in a year, compared with only five for men. Women read more than men in all categories except for history and biography.





"Reading requires incredible patience, and the ability to 'feel into' the characters. That is something women are both more interested in and also better at than men," says Brizendine.
Rekindling the Reading Magic.



There are exceptions to the fiction gap. More boys than girls have read The Harry Potter series, according to its U.S. publisher, Scholastic. What's more, Harry Potter made more of an impact on boys' reading habits. Sixty-one percent agreed with the statement "I didn't read books for fun before reading Harry Potter," compared with 41 percent of girls.

I believe with my own reading that I can drift into a new world of any book I am reading giving me the escape I may need for that particular moment. I relate to all my charachters and feel either their joy or sadness. Books warm the heart and ecery story being told can be as complex or simple as the next with still a point to made across each page the reader.