The Year of Prime and the Publipocalypse

Border's has filed Chapter 11.
Publishing houses have performed tectonic-plate like shuffles of imprints and editors.
E-books are out-selling paperback and hardback books.
Even Snooki hasn't gone into a second printing. (Maybe she has. I don't know. The whole Snooki thing kind of depresses me.)
The printed word is an endangered species ...

We're DOOOMED!
Okay. At least it gave us all an excuse to have early cocktails this week. (Umm ... you did have yours, didn't you, while toasting to the end of the era of literature and the beginning of a world in which we'll be forced to watch reality TV on a twenty-four hour feed?)

Here's the thing that's pretty great about human beings. Reinvention. And something that books haven't really had to do since, well, Gutenberg. Think of what the Egyptians would've said had Gutenberg been around when they were. They'd have had a slew of unemployed stone chiselers.

I have no idea what will happen in the next ten years. Hell, five years ago I wasn't addicted to Facebook and Twitter. Mubarak probably never thought social networking would be all that interesting. Who knew?

The world IS changing. How cool is that! There's no way to know what will happen to books, bookstores, and the general business. But there are a few things I am certain of.

As long as we have a world ... (that one's up in the air, too, I guess)

1. The world will always need stories.
2. The world will always need storytellers.
3. The world will always need people who hunt for talent in the slew of storytellers.
4. The world will always need people to help storytellers tell their stories better.
5. The world will always need people to promote storytellers, spread the news of storytellers, find ways to make stories of storytellers more appealing ...
6. The world will always need people to sell the stories of storytellers.


Basically, we'll all be here, changing, no doubt, worrying, no doubt, and writing. We'll be creating worlds with words, inventing futures that probably aren't  as far away as we imagine (Fingers crossed it's not the Hunger Games), believing in princesses and fairies, ghosts and vampires, battling the drudgery of day jobs and high school existential angst, hoping for that first kiss in the rain (since all good kisses happen in the rain, right?), crying over someone we've loved and lost -- all with words.

And our publishing houses, editors, publicists, marketing directors, library team, design team, copy editors, and book reps will bring our stories to librarians, schools, bookstores (like Border's that will find their way back in the world) via print, e-books, and whatever medium we can get our hands on because we need stories.

So writers, don't despair. Keep writing.
We need stories. Fiction will always be an essential part of who we are, as people, as human beings. 
It reminds me of something Gabriel Garcia Marquez said:

Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.

So what story do you want to tell? (And try to make sure it's not a tall tale for you wife. That Jonas one is so overused.)