The Future of Books

Facebook author groups are full of arguments concerning the use of AI. Some writers consider it the most useful tool since the printing press. Others see it as competition. If you don't know, AI is now capable of writing entire books, and it's sometimes tough to tell what came from a human being and what came from a machine. Arguments about the use of AI break out often among authors, but one comment made yesterday really resonated with me: "Who cares? This entire industry is dead."

I have to admit, it feels that way to those of us trying to sell books. I don't even think it's an AI issue. I think it's a time issue.

Today's economy and our busy lifestyles have stripped us of free time. We're so busy surviving that there's little space left for things that fulfill us.

I heard an ER doctor say, "Nobody gets to the end of their life and wishes they'd answered ten more emails." He went on to say that as Americans, we work harder than anybody, we're richer than everybody, yet we are the most unhappy people on the planet. We strive for productivity, results, and goals, not happiness. Not even contentment. And yet, when we take time for ourselves, our productivity and performance actually increase.

If you think reading a book takes too much time, try writing one. Then imagine a machine being able to perform a year of your work in less than a minute. It's crazy!

There was a time when books were not simple possessions but fiercely protected treasures. Owning books marked you as wealthy, educated, and special. In the days before electronics, books opened up the world. They were like sacred relics, passed hand to hand and only loaned to the must trusted friends. A single book was devoured over and over, read until the pages were loose and thin.

Now we have the world in our hands. Our attention spans have grown so short we no longer have time for reading a novel. Yet the moment we pick one up and lose ourselves in the story, we find focus, peace, and a nostalgic contentment we didn't even realize we'd been missing. Books are medicinal in this electro-world, where our brains are battered by fear-mongering headlines and the increasing struggle to simply survive in a terrible economy.

There's a good chance nobody will even read the books I'm writing. There's an even better chance I could plug a two-sentence plot into AI and it would produce a fairly readable book in less than a minute. So yes, writing feels like a waste of time these days, and yes, it does seem like the entire industry is dead. The literary world may be one of the first destroyed by AI, but it won't be the last. That won't keep me from writing, though. There's a good chance AI burns itself out, and when it does, we'll need books again.

Besides, that peace you feel when reading the words I gave you? It's the same peace I felt when writing them. That alone makes it worthwhile.