Our books 100 years from now

A book written around 1900 is considered old.

What might people think about our books 100
years from now should they find a copy?
Will they consider it a rare find?
Could it become a collector’s item?
Will they find lots errors and wonder about
the publisher?
Will they wonder about the author?

What do you wish will happen to your book?

It makes me think of the book written years in the future where they burned books because they didn't want people knowing things so they burned all the books, not just certain topics.

There was an underground group of people who memorized a book each. Then each generation chose someone of the next generation to memorize the book they had memorized to carry onto future generations. That way the books would never die.

I would love my book to be one of those books.

I sure hope people will still be interested in my work 100 years from now. That's one thing about a good story or poem, it's timeless.

So true. Books will never go out of date!

I don't know.
I'd never really thought about my book 100 years from now.
My guess is that my family would have copies of it.

Fairy tales tend to stick around. Maybe mine will too.

Hmm, interesting thought Abe. 100 years from now, hopefully someone will come across a copy and enjoy it, just as I enjoy reading something old like Charles Dickens or Shakespeare or poetry by some of the late great writers. When I read them I do think about authors; where they lived, how they managed to eke out a living just writing or in addition to other pursuits.
For someone to pick something up that's old and written in dated or archaid (to them) language would be a huge compliment to me as a writer.
I wonder what kind of explanations our writing will need...with things like contractions, or accented speech, referrence to things like the Blackberry, PC, Mac, borders that have changed and events that are no longer a part of current purview.
Do you think we could stick our heads out of the clouds and have a look, say a hundred years from now?
:pirat:

I seem to be out of step with everybody today. When I'm under the dirt, something that should have happened years ago according to the charts, I won't give a hoot what happens to anything I've written so why should I care now?

I don't believe that Dick. Can you honestly say that you don't care about anything you have written? That what you have recorded has not been recorded for posterity? That you wouldn't care if they trashed everything you've said or done? If that were true, why would you have written about these things in the first place? What about your war experience? Was it not to reveal the reality of war?
I will even remember the stories you have shared about Sophie, and especially about Jackie.
Now tell me that these things will not have been important.

Abe, some were important at the time, but of no interest to me whatsover once they are finished other than to keep copies of something that might be needed for further use. I'm not saying that my outlook is correct or even normal. It may be owing to having had to do so much writing for so many years that once something is written I want only to forget it and move on to something new.
I'll tell Sophie and Jackie you enjoyed reading about them. Jackie will be pleased. Sophie will yawn as only a hamster can and then start begging for a treat.

If you want your book to be around 100 years from now, be sure to have paper copies of it (on acid-free paper, preferibly), because it's doubtful that your computer will still work (or even exist) in 100 years. Even if you have it saved on digital media that is capible of lasting more than 100 years (such as a gold plated archival CD), after 100 years, the equipment and software needed to read it will in all likelihood long since become obscelete. So have papre copies!

Excellent point.

As I continue to turn the pages of this 1898 hardback novel of mine (and I'm still enjoying it), I do wonder about the author and what she may have been like. Even after 110 years, the print is still of pristine quality and the leaves are much thicker and harder-wearing compared to most modern hardbacks I've known. The binding is beginning to come a bit loose, so I take more care with it than I would with any other novel.

Since I started chatting here, I guess this book is now proving to be more precious to me than any other in my small collection, simply because it's the oldest. There's also a musty smell in the old paper that I can only imagine to be from the original ink that went into the pages back in 1898. So....not only is this book a fossilization of the thoughts and imaginings of its long perished author...but equally a time capsule of smells and the wood pulp from which it was made all those years ago...

May Ms. Geraldine Mockler rest in peace and know that I'm still enjoying her book a century later...

I enjoyed reading your thoughts, Ahad. I also like your new picture. That looks like my kind of sweater.

It's a shirt Dick not a sweater, and the picture is going back a while to my more, shall we say, 'youthful' days.

(I've always been meaning to say... Your pipe looks a lot like the one my dad used to smoke :pirat: )

H'mm, a shirt. OK, I like your shirt. Sounds like your dad was a wise man.

I have an appreciation for old books. Some in my meager library of collectibles date to Civil War times and a couple of others are later in 19th Century. I like to see the language in use and to be exposed to customs of the times. Perhaps just as important are the flyleaf inscriptions. These books belonged to real people with whom I now can share their experiences. Yeah, I'd like for someone to find my books a hundred years from now, to let them know I passed this way, and just maybe impart a bit of history that might be overlooked in the formal history records.

Jim Woods
www.ultrasw.com/jwoods

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If you really want your book to last, I'd like to remind you to use acid-free paper. Most print publishers do, except mayby the cheapest bargan-basement ones.

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MS Reynolds wrote:

Yep, a real book made with real paper and you won't have to worry about being compatible with Windows 2108, ver. 6.3 with SP 4800

--Melinda

You just reminded me of my first computer Melinda...a Commodore 64, and my boyfriend had a TRS80 from Radio Shack. It's really not that long ago...25 years, but we've sure since lots of changes since then. I'm glad I keep paper copies of everything, although some stuff I have off of a dot matrix printer is really pretty funny looking already...I think it has to do with the rough edges that are left after tearing the edging off the paper.

If you want to print documents to last 100 years, besides acid-free paper, you'll want to invest in a quality printer and high quality ink too.