Jeremy Harmer ELT

I like writing books. I’ve been doing it for years. Despite the loneliness, the impossibly hard slog, the fear of going blank, the emotional ups and downs and the backache, the writing process is almost always challenging and invigorating (except on the days when it isn’t!). Add to that the joy of meeting someone who has experienced real emotion, relief, support or pathos because of something you have written and, well why doesn’t everyone do it?! 

Now that I’m writing again (fiction & non-fiction) new questions and doubts have crept into the whole business. To take a few examples, (1) do people actually want to read books anymore whether fiction or, especially, non-fiction when there are so many other ways of finding sources of entertainment and distraction (the whole world of social media)? (2) If you want to find information, why go to a book when you can just ask AI (Google, you’re so last year!)? Sure we know that AI gets things wrong sometimes but as I have said before, as time passes, that will almost certainly happen significantly less frequently.

Recently I have read two novels which moved me beyond anything I expected (The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See and Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis) and the experience of sitting on the sofa with a paperback in my hand is as compelling as it has always been – and an experience I don’t do as much as before thanks to (?) the phone in my pocket. But then, without being specific, I am not in the first flush of youth! Maybe I’m part of a dwindling reading demographic? 

According to one source, however, print books will have 1.9 billion readers by 2029 and ebooks will have 1.2 billion readers at the same time despite the fact that when they first started appearing the expectation was that paper books would disappear. Clearly though (I am pleased to say) they’re not going anywhere. A survey in the United States, for example, suggested that 75% of the responders had read a book or ebook in the last year. 32% only read print books, 33% were happy with either, 9% only read ebooks and 23% didn’t read books at all! (3)What should I publish then in my field (English Language Teaching methodology); ebooks print books or both?  OK I have no idea how reliable these stats are, but they don’t sound too far off.

The really big question, though, is (4) would anyone pay for this stuff (see questions 1 & 2 above) because if not I might as well just go and pick up one of my guitars! Come to think of it that’s not such a bad idea…….