What are your worries and hopes for future writers?

Worries:

1) That future stories will be copycat versions of pre-existing Blockbuster storylines

2) That authors will "dumb down" their writing standards to appeal to a broader (and less educated) reader demographic

3) That story subject matter will become as politically correct as the Western culture is becoming

4) That books will become excessively long and drawn out as more and more people publish electronically (as if thinking the lack of tangible pages will excuse the excessive word count)

5) That it will become the "norm" to publish quantity (penny novels), over quality literature to offset pricing wars within the publishing industry

6) That an academic degree (in English or a related subject), will become necessary to publish

7) More emphasis will be placed on mainstream material rather than subject matter with literary depth

8) That novel writing will give way to some form of hypertext fiction or visual fiction and written form will cease altogether.

Hopes:

1) That none of the above occur.

I worry that the economy will fall into another Great Depression that will surpass the 1930s and then book sales will evaporate. And after the globe pulls out of the worst of it all people will want to read are stories about life during the Great Depression. You see this pattern happen all the time. Before every war and during war no one wants to read war novels but after the war they do. So if this happens then that will limit the genres meant to serve as escapism.

I hope that writers will stop writing to meet market demands and that authors have more say in publishing traditionally some day instead of deferring to a publishers market statistics to tell them what will sell and what wont.

Well as a writer, my fear is writing something that has been written about a lot or writing something similar to a previously written work without being aware of it. Genres are constantly changing due to writers needing to be increasingly creative and inventive just to have their own work. Its not easy trying to write something that has never been seen before. The key is an unlimited imagination a a feel for what readers will want to read, not what they're reading now. If that makes any sense.

I'm not entirely sure about the future, but something that worries me very much now, and which will have a big impact on the future, is the virtual non-existence of young adult detective/crime books. Maybe I have only noticed it because I'm a young adult who loves detective and crime books, but (to me) it seems as though there are no writers writing in this genre for young adults. Surely by losing this influence there will be less crime authors in the future?

Also, currently there are hundreds and thousands of romance, paranormal romance and fantasy writers around and writing in these genres for young adults. Whilst I have no problem with these genres as a whole, it certainly becomes annoying when these genres are not your favourites and you walk into a bookshop to find that they only stock what is currently "popular". Surely this too will result in a decline in young, new writers of DIFFERENT genres?

Mine please? http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ArC8a...

the biggest worry is that more people seem to be becoming illiterate, and that they are doing so deliberately.

It will be decades if not centuries before text talk becomes intelligible to most readers, and it is to that audience that mainstream publishers (as all manufacturing) looks to sell.

I think writers will become less "brave" to explore new territory, and will play it safe using ideas that are already around (vampires, wizards & witches etc).