Pipe Dreams
Okay, in my last post I said people who make predictions aren’t that bright. And then I go and write a post with the title ‘Coming Golden Age’? Am I crazy? No, because if you add a question mark after a prediction, you’re just posing a query, not telling the future, right?
I got to thinking about Scott Adams dire prediction that the profession of authors will be retired in his lifetime. I wrote a rebuttal but the more I’ve thought about it the more I wonder if digital technology won’t do just the opposite–open up a golden age in literature. This is in stark contrast to many who have claimed that e-books will in fact bring about the death of literature, but allow me to explain.
Dan Wells recently presented a lifetime achievement award to Dave Wolverton at the Whitney Awards. While doing so, Dan briefly told his life story which surprised me because it mirrored my own. He wanted to be an author since he was young. Public school all but beat that dream out of him, but when he got to college, Dave Wolverton told him he could fulfill his dream. It would take work, but it could be done. Dan studied the craft, worked hard, and is now an accomplished author.
Where our stories differ is that my professor in college told me that it wasn’t possible to make money at writing, at least not as an author. He informed our class that the odds of making a living writing were a million to one, but that if we loved the craft we should go into technical writing instead. I didn’t want to be a technical writer, and so I gave up the dream and went the more practical route of choosing a career in technology and education. Even to this day I cannot find time to study the craft like I could have back in college, and I lost years of writing because of this poor decision.
But as we move into the realm of e-books, we’re going to see more and more authors being able to make a comfortable living at writing. Twenty years ago things did look pretty bleak. You had a handful of superstars raking in millions of dollars, and then a good number of authors who were barely scratching out a living, many of them having to work a ‘day job’ to support their writing habits.
Enter the digital era. If e-books pan out like many are predicting, students in college will be told, “Hey, you may not be able to make ten million a year like the authors of yesteryear, but if you’re good you can make a comfortable living.” Would-be authors will see their dream as a viable profession, not one of a starving artist. We’ll have more students studying the craft, more students delivering their work via the new digital models, and more choices when we go to the digital bookstore in the cloud. We’ll see more and better work, not less.
So to all you English majors out there wondering if you should be chase after your dream, or choose the more practical route, I’m happy to tell you, now you can do both.
