The BBC’s World at One recently asked five leading figures in the literary world for their thoughts on the ‘future of the book’. Here is what they had to say:
1.) Notorious literary agent, Andrew Wylie – aka ‘the Jackal’ – worried that the industry is at a crisis point. He argued the book industry is in danger of mirroring the fortunes of the music industry by giving too much power to distributors like Amazon. ‘Publishers have been trying to reconcile themselves with the demands of the digital distributors,‘ he said. ‘I think if they allow the digital distributors to set the music then the dance will become fatal…The music business ended up needing to go on the road to support the musicians who were part of it. It would be a fairly dire situation if writers had to give public readings in order to support themselves.‘
2.)
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