Hugh Howey forecasts the future of literature:
If these are the end times for literature, then we must be traveling in circles, for the death of storytelling looks an awful lot like its birth. The novel itself isn’t all that old. Sure, we can find a handful of examples going back thousands of years, but you have to stretch your definition of novel the further back you go. Really, the idea of an immutable and unchangeable text dates only to the printing press. Before that, every scribe tasked with producing a tome thought he was an author. Like movie producers dabbling with plot, it was difficult for the hand-copiers of text not to make a tweak here or there. Books were ever-changing. Stories evolved. And that was the way things were until Gutenberg’s time.
Fast forward to 2012, where 1 out of every 5 books sold was part of the 50 Shades of Grey series. Originally a work of Twilight fan fiction, the monumental success of 50 Shades of Grey turned a spotlight on the shadowy world of fan-generated literature. Soon, publishers were seeking out other popular works of fan fiction and signing authors to mega deals. Then Amazon announced its Kindle Worlds program, which commercialized fan fiction and opened up licensed worlds for exploration. To purists—who mix a love of history with a thin understanding of the past—the sanctity of the written word was in jeopardy. It was raining frogs. The volcanoes were angry. These lovers of the very modern novel clamored for a return to our roots. And yet—that is precisely where we are heading.
The Dish 