This time, though, the anxiety has a number attached.
A recent Economist piece argued that it is not only that people are reading less, but that “the texture of what is being read is changing,” noting that its analysis of hundreds of New York Times bestsellers found that sentences in popular books have become almost a third shorter since the 1930s.
It is not the aggressively marketable thriller, nor the prestige title already carrying prize buzz before most readers have turned page one. It is the intelligent, well-written, emotionally exact novel that sits somewhere in between.
It is not the algorithmic sort of thrill, not the flash-sale urgency of consumer culture, but that quieter jolt. The moment you see a cover and think, I don’t know what this is yet, but I want to live inside it. I admit I do sometimes (not always) judge a book by its cover. I do not feel guilty for doing so.
There was a time when fan fiction lived in the shadows, tucked into forums, buried in tags, dismissed as derivative, and looked down upon. It wasn’t writing. It was adoration as typing.
Not anymore. Now, it’s edging toward centre stage, commanding the attention of publishers, agents, and readers alike.
How long before AI writes a New York Times bestseller?
It’s a question that lingers like a subplot, unresolved, faintly unsettling, impossible to ignore. Earlier this year, a publishing data analyst sparked headlines by predicting that an AI-written book could top bestseller charts by 2030.