How do you think the publishing industry is adapting to the "attention economy," and how do you feel about those shifts? Are books an antidote to shortening attention spans?
From what I've seen, publishing for fiction has not made many strides to deal with the shortening attention spans of a younger generation. In truth, what could they do? Novels are the full-attention span medium of entertainment. More than movies, more than plays, even the 5 hour Shakespeare epics pale in comparison to the time investment in a book.
Nor do I think they should be chasing shorter attention spans. So far every attempt that I've witnessed has failed. Amazon went all-in on serialized content. Breaking books up into short parts and delivering them to your Kindle one by one, like episodes of a TV season. Giant flop. We're in an on-demand age. Customers didn't care for being told to wait.
I've heard several times that novellas are the future. People read on their phones in short snatches, they want shorter content. Untrue. Novellas are seen as a poor value. Spend money for a book that's under 100 pages long? Customers have said no, thanks. The biggest hit sector of the book market recently has been fantasy and romantasy series which have 500-600 page installments within 8 or 10 book series. The readers are out there. They're also posting about these books on the very apps that aim to take attention spans away.
I've long said that the kind of books you read depends greatly on how you read. If you can only fit in a quick read on your lunchbreak or you commute, then shorter chapters, smaller page counts and tighter prose will appeal to you.
If you are retired and have all afternoon to recline and luxuriate in a book, then length is less important. Think of the classic novels teenagers think of as so boring when they become required reading in high school. Back then, reading was one of the only forms of entertainment. Nobody was fighting Austen or Dickens for your attention like today.
The short chapters technique has been effective for quite a while now. Just ask the world's most popular writer, James Patterson. Those novels are routinely 100+ chapters. The books are still 300-400 pages, so the overall length isn't compromised, but the illusion of speed is created. Better for today's readers. Frankly, I'm surprised more writers don't do it, myself included.
With readership shrinking, the publishing industry would be wise not to abandon the ones who are keeping it afloat. To chase kids whose attention is caught up in TikTok, YouTube and Instagram is foolish and a losing strategy.
Books can be the alternative. To make it a viable alternative is a larger cultural question of how to make reading appealing again to a generation raised on 10 second video-aided hits of dopamine. That's above my pay grade.
My other fear is that the industry is pricing out many readers. Books used to be the entertainment for the masses, highbrow and low. But, like theater before it, as prices climb, a smaller and smaller sector of the market can even afford a book. The days of the .25 paperback on a spinner rack in the drugstore are gone. Replaced by the $33.00 hardcover. That's quite an investment. More than a full month of Netflix viewing.
But if publishing decides on chasing a shrinking market of young readers who can't afford their product anyhow, they're in for worse times ahead.
Reading will never go away. Much like music in a digital age, it will become increasingly harder to make a living as an author. Attention spans will continue to shrink as will the mass market appeal of books. It's the world as we live it these days. But for the die-hards, books will continue to live on. And for those of us who have the impulse control to read a full novel, we'll be the richer for it.
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