This August, the Edinburgh Internional Book Festival hosted a debate called The End of Books? in which the speakers pointed out that with the rise of the e-book has come a fall in author advances from publishers; that the days of publishing an author rather than a book are over.

As authors are no longer being offered a living wage, having to depend upon future book sales, are we witnessing the end of the book as we know it?  Anna and Michael offer their opinions.

Isn’t the real thing better than electronic equipment?

ANNA: Well, yes, it is. As appealing as the Kindle’s smooth curves may be to some, plastic will never replace the feel of paper against my fingers. I love the physical aspects of reading: seeing my progress through the book, folding pages down to mark my place, writing my name in the front. Holding a book, I feel calm: I just need to read the words, and turn the pages, and let the story unfold. I don’t want to press a power switch and I don’t want to watch the e-ink redistribute every time I click to the next page.

Tactile pleasures aside, there is also an issue of ownership. A physical book is mine: just as I hold it in my hands, it belongs to me, and I can lend it to a friend or keep it all to myself. There is something spookily temporal about an e-book, like it is being lent to us by the commercial gods. And how will shy literary girls ever get talking to shy literary boys if not through the age-old book swap date?

MICHAEL: No. I’m sorry to say it, but reading on a Kindle is in many ways better than reading a paper book; they’ve been practically designed with the reader in mind. If you’ve ever tried reading, say, Charles Dickens in paperback, you’ll know that some books are too large to be comfortably held in one hand, leaving a reader no choice but to change seating positions slightly as they move from one page to the next. In short, it is more comfortable to read on an e-reader that flicks between pages at the touch of a finger - and you don’t even have to hold it.

As well as not having to own forearms of steel to read Dickens, you don’t have to have an impressive vocabulary either. With its built-in dictionary, which can be searched by hovering over a word without interrupting the reading process, a reader can comfortably read the classics without feeling intimidated by an author’s use of language.

And without using paper, less trees are cut down. You’ll never have to feel guilty about reading that waste-of-paper-tv-personality’s autobiography again. And where you may have lost or damaged a paper book, even if your Kindle is stolen or damaged, your library is saved by Amazon online.

The latest reading technology is a more durable, useful and comfortable way of reading books.

Will writers stop writing?

 ANNA: In The End of Books?, writer Ewan Morrison said that “we need to leave behind the romantic notion of the author in the garret. Books could not work without the economic framework that supports artists, and that economic framework is changing.”

This is undoubtedly true, but the fact is that writers will always write. Their economic situation is set to change, certainly. By no means, however, does this mean that the written word is in danger. A distinction needs to be drawn here between the written word and the printed word.

As much as I love the printed word, I can see that its future is uncertain. But in a world of electronic publishing, it seems writers will have the opportunity to become even more prolific. Of course there are issues of authors’ earnings, but given that it is in no one’s interests for the written word to die, the onus falls on publishers, both electronic and physical, and authors to work together to find a solution.

MICHAEL: No. “The Writer” as a profession will no longer exist because without a stable income supporting an author’s work, even the best known authors will become something like freelance authors, flitting from publishing house to publishing house hoping that someone will take on their latest book.

But if a writer writes regardless of who reads, couldn’t an author just get a day job and write in their spare time? Of course, and if writing is a compulsion, they will - but I can’t help thinking that coming home from a long day of work to labour through an unfinished novel is not the most productive way to get things done. Authors would soon become burned out, producing post-modern streams of conscious narratives by pressing the keyboard with their faces, fast asleep.

As much as authors may pretend they write for art’s sake and no other purpose, the economic factor is one that always lingers in the background of art’s existence. Without bookshops selecting what we read we will be able to read many more new and exciting authors; but soon these authors will stop writing in order to eat.

How will the form change?

 ANNA: Speakers at The End of Books? suggested that the likely future for physical publishing would be one of special, limited edition hardbacks, to embrace and promote the industry’s natural advantage: the tactile and aesthetic pleasures that books bring.

This seems a reasonable expectation, and although I would be sad to see the demise of paperbacks, it does seem to be the most probable long-term outcome.

I suppose I am going to have to come to terms with the era of the tattered paperback coming to an end. With it, we lose a lot. We will have to bid goodbye to the days of feeling an affinity with strangers based on spotting a familiar front cover poking out of their bag, or knowing what they’re reading on the train. Bookshelves full of beautiful hardbacks will be stylistically pleasing but lacking in personality. Bookmarks will become obsolete. Future generations might never know the smell of a second-hand bookshop.

MICHAEL: In terms of the electronic book, as was discussed at The End of Books?, the internet has created a generation of people with very short attention spans, and if we are to become a culture of ‘dabble’ readers who cannot even fathom reading an entire novel, electronic literature will have to be shorter, punchier, with a continually changing style to keep our attention.

What electronic literature can do to make up for the loss of the tactility of the novel is to include video clips, music clips, other voices speaking non-written text... The possibilities are endless.

It would be a shame if the paper book became obsolete, but perhaps we should let go of our nostalgic attachments and embrace the future of literature. It may be scary, but progress is better than being left behind in an empty library.