Myth or Reality?
It is not a myth, but the internet has changed book culture. What does it mean? When people were imprisoned in ancient times, they were given lots of books to spend their time productively. This used to happen especially with royal people, despite the fact that they were avid readers or not. They had no other option than to give someone books inside a room, but now we have many options. Kids nowadays lack book reading habits a lot. In the past, like 30 years or forty years back, children used to read manga and comics even if they didn’t like reading literature. But now, kids have video games, television, and the internet. If we talk about the older generation, they had also shifted to the newspaper after its arrival.
Below we’ll discuss if technology has diluted the importance of books and the future of book reading.
The Arrival of EBooks
Books have changed the way they were before. Now people can read books on their mobile phones, tablets and computers. People haven’t stopped reading books. People still read since they need information and knowledge. Amazon has also launched digital books, which they call Kindles. It’s like a tablet and has a complete book inside. Book culture might have changed, but reading culture has not changed. Now, this is a debatable topic. People read their books on digital gadgets, for example, their cellphones, tablets, etc. These digital books are called ebooks.
Audiobooks
Moreover, audiobooks are also famous. Audiobooks are the modern form of the practice of wealthy people and royal ones who used to ask literate people to read a book to them. Now we don’t have to do that, as we get an audiobook option where we can listen to a book if we don’t want to read it.
Encouraging Video and Image Content
Nowadays, the text is not as much endorsed as videos and images. For example, Facebook and Google discourage people from using more text ads. They suggest using video and picture advertisements since their algorithms work well like that.
Books for Businesses
Today many more books are getting published than before, but people don’t write value-orientated books. Most people write books to do business, and they don’t focus on quality as before. Writing a book only to sell it is not wrong, but it becomes terrible when the fundamental purpose is selling and not providing any value. Book reading was never wholly obsolete. However, people are not interested in writing unique books than doing business, which is the bitter truth of today’s world. For example, instead of coming up with valuable initiatives, they write summaries on already published, well-selling books. They may think it can make them rich since they talk about a famous thing.
Difficulty in Book Publishing
In the early days, publishing a book might not be as difficult as today. Traditional publishers publish very few books in this modern age. Traditional publishers have set requirements, such as submitting manuscripts through a literary agent, editing your book, and other policies. Publishers set these barriers to restrict people to write mediocre and stolen content and getting published. And people should only buy good and quality books. However, some people feel bad when they see a celebrity, a politician, a rich and famous entrepreneur easily publish his book. Still, non-celebrities experience stumbling blocks in publishing their book.
However, we have alternative ways like self-publishing and indie publishing, but the majority do not value these methods as traditional publishing.
People who read books
There are always people, or at least we have seen in this age, who like to be minimalistic. These individuals live like older people for 100 or 150 years or even more than before. They also call themselves old souls. However, some books are evergreen that people still read today, and we don’t replace them. We can say that any other medium cannot replace books, things can compete with it, but they cannot entirely throw it out of the picture. Bibliophiles are there in this modern era who still love to grab a cup of coffee and read their favourite novel. Some people even read a 300 plus page novel in four days out of curiosity, just like we watch our favourite television shows no matter how many episodes are in it in 3 to 4 days.
Final Word
We have discussed in this article if it is an exaggerated myth that people don’t read books anymore or have shifted to digital media entirely. We concluded that people still read books, and they never stopped it. However, people changed the ways of book reading and learning things. Some individuals read book pdfs on their smartphones or by kindles. But some people like to hold a printed book in their hands and read it. Therefore, we can say undoubtedly that the future of book reading is safe. So, if you think of writing a book in 2022, and you have an exciting and valuable topic to tell to people, you can write a book and sell it successfully. However, there is a lot of competition and saturation, so you must strive to stand out to be successful. If you need help writing your book, you can reach out to any good ebook writing service that will assist you in writing your book.
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