Death of Books

The death of books will not come at the hands of the digital age, like some doomsayers used to proclaim from atop their slush piles. Publisher’s forget that real book nerds (and you know who you are) will always purchase books. I’m one of them. I love going to bookstores and browse the shelves, checking out covers and reading blurbs in the hopes of finding my own white whale. A trip to Half Price books, my own personal Mecca, is always packed with customers – so the demand is there, its not diminishing.

What is diminishing is the quality of work as the the Publishing houses get more woke. It’s the source of the river poisoning the inhabitants downstream and as result, killing the business. And its not like we haven’t seen this self-destruction before – it started in the comic industry with diversity hires and woke politics. Who can forget the great creative idea they had when they reset all their titles and started substituting established characters with the opposite sex? How is that working for Marvel now as they do the exact same thing in their newest phase over at Marvel Studios? They love to blame the fanbase, without really knowing who their fanbase really is – dudes who are always thirsty for hot, ass kicking babes! Comic nerds eat that up. Hell, they live for it. What they don’t like is being attacked, called names, and being force fed feminism and woke agendas. Why would a paying customer buy a product written by people who hate them.

And this insanity isn’t just happening in comics, it’s spread like a virus into the video gaming industry, film, and now books. I’m going to show my age here, but does anyone remember the NOTHING from “The NeverEnding Story?” If you haven’t seen it, go do so at once – its bloody fantastic, but in the meantime, since you’re already here, there is a nothingness spreading across this fantasy world destroying it – that’s liberal wokeism today. You get these brainwashed, crazy eyed, far-leftist invading publishing houses as agents, slush pile readers, editors, and finally the upper brass and instead of looking for good books, no matter the skin color/gender of the author, they openly discriminate.

Not only do the discriminate, they call for books the majority of readers don’t want to read. Sure, there is a market for it, but its real niche. And then they take those niche books and try to market/sale them to an audience that doesn’t want it. What happens? It fails. When a publishing house continues to promote books that don’t sale – what happens? They go bankrupt and bookstores, like comic book shops, close.

In my humble opinion, if we don’t get this fixed – where we once again focus on story – this industry will also die a slow, agonizing death. And it already is. Right now, its on life support – mainly kept alive by old, established authors who are slowly dying off one by one. There are no new names to carry this industry on its back once other greats cast off their mortal coils. This past year we lost Ann Rice – what happens when other power players die – no Stephen King, James Patterson, J.K. Rowling, Dean Koontz, John Grisham, Danielle Steel, etc. It doesn’t help either that publishing is no longer building big names.

Let’s be honest here, the publishing industry is on its lasts legs if they don’t take their heads out of their ass and start focusing on producing better books. I’m not the savior. Who will be? If you think its going to be a Gender Queer, non-binary, cat lady from Washington who writes books about gay romances set in the backdrop of WW2 – you got to be dreaming. And let me just say there is nothing wrong with either that lifestyle or that writing, but its not what the masses want to read.