Last Updated on January 5, 2015 by Nathaniel Tower
The literary landscape is rapidly changing, and it is almost impossible to foretell what a new year will bring. However, I’ve looked into my literary crystal ball, and these are 15 predictions that could have a huge impact on the literary community in 2015:
1. David Foster Wallace will team up with Jack White to release a new novel available exclusively on a 25-record set. Each record will feature a hologram of David Foster Wallace reading the novel while spinning backwards on his head. The audio book will be the first vinyl release to ship platinum since the 1970s. David Foster Wallace will win a Grammy for best spoken-word album, but he will be snubbed by the National Book Awards.
2. NaNoWriMo will begin taking applications for National Novel Writing Month in early March. Only .01% of applications will be accepted. Only accepted applicants will be permitted to work on a novel in any form during the month of November. None of these books will end up getting published.
3. The New Yorker will launch a special issue featuring only un-solicited and un-agented stories submitted directly through the website. The issue will feature a blank cover and will become the bestselling issue of anything in over two decades.
4. A massive Amazon hack will convert every e-book into a copy of the long-overdue digital release of How to Avoid Huge Ships. At least one person will be crushed by a huge ship while trying to figure out what happened to his copy of Gone Girl that he has been lying about reading for over a year.
5. Indie Lit will become mainstream and take over the New York Times Best Seller list. At one point during the year, 10 of the top 11 spots will be occupied by indie lit books. The other spot will be taken by Jenny McCarthy’s debut novel about a young Autistic boy who contracted the “disease” when his parents administered a half-dose of grape Tylenol to fight off his 103 degree fever.
6. BuzzFeed Books will launch a full line of novels told in list format. 90% of the novels will go viral, but the majority of people will hate all of them.
7. Dino erotica will go extinct due to unexplainable circumstances. Scientists won’t try to figure out the mystery.
8. A second massive Amazon hack will result in Powell’s becoming the world’s leading seller of books.
9. A Hunger Games/Twilight/Harry Potter mash-up will become the bestselling book of all time, but it won’t recoup the cost of the advance.
10. Taylor Swift will win a National Book Award despite the fact that she won’t release a book.
11. In a desperate move, Amazon will purchase the rights to self-publish anything. Quality control will continue to be non-existent.
12. No writers will commit any acts of rape or make any foolish racist statements.
13. No fewer than a dozen non-fiction bestsellers will be uncovered as frauds. People will buy the books anyway and swear every word is true.
14. A previously undiscovered Shakespeare play will be released, performed, and subsequently panned by critics as derivative and trite. It will contain the words “fuckerydo” and “fuckatron,” causing some linguists to question its authenticity.
15. This blog post will go viral, but no more than 14 of these predictions will actually come even partially true.
What do you think will happen in 2015? Share your literary predictions in the comments.
I can’t make any predictions, but I can tell you that fuckerydo is word worthy of its own post. Perhaps book. Maybe even a movie. You could get Taylor Swift and Jenny McCarthy to star in it.
That movie sounds wonderfully awful. Or awfully wonderful.
Amazon will be consumed by the Rain Forest where the land will flood for 40 days and 40 nights. Noah will re-appear as David Sedaris who will launch a boat with twin androids of every species. Books will be replaced by Papyrus leaves hardened into words nobody wants to read because the newest smart phone just hit the market place.
Maybe the next smart phone will be made out of Papyrus leaves.
haha, this is so great
Being autistic ourselves we take exception to the stereotype that we would EVER consume anything grape. Definitely not grape.
No offense meant, of course. It was all Jenny McCarthy’s idea.