The printing press was invented in 1440. For hundreds of years since, generations of avid readers have devoured books, keeping shelves in their home stacked with scores of leather bound tomes (and more recently, flimsy paperback novels), teaching their kids to read with primers and picture books. Recently, however, traditional book publication has begun to hit a decline. Publishing companies are losing money, self-publishing and e-books and audiobooks are becoming more popular, and the audience for books is rapidly dwindling. The book industry just isn’t what it used to be. Therefore, most statisticians predict its death, sometime within the next few decades.
As a lover of books, an aspiring author and an English major, this is vaguely worrying. A thousand fears could, and do, spring from these undeniable statistics. What if I can’t get a job? What if I write a book and no one publishes it? What if it is published, but no one buys it? What if my major is useless? What if since no one is writing, I can’t get an editing job? What if I can’t get physical copies of books anymore and I have to listen to audiobooks all the time?
However, all it takes is a few moment of thinking to put most of those fears to rest. Books will never truly die. Even if the publication industry shifts to e-books, which I don’t believe it ever will entirely unless we run out of trees, there will always still be an audience for reading. Even if the audience is smaller than in previous times, I can’t imagine the entire world leaving books behind in the dust as outdated or archaic. There will always be nerds like me who prefer the weight of a book in their hand, the smell of the paper, the sound of turning a page.
And, as long as people write, there will be editors. Whether those writers are journalists, or webpage authors, or book writers, they will need editing. Someone, somewhere, will be writing something, and it will need to be checked over for typos. Writers aren’t perfect, myself included, and people will always write. Therefore, there will always be a need for editors. I believe that is one of life’s true constants. Even if the book industry shifts somehow, I don’t believe it will ever truly die.
Writing Wizard 