“At this point, it is no longer the death of the book that should be dreaded, but that of the Creator”

Despite the embellishment observed at the end of the confinement in 2021-2022, the number of books sold in Europe decreases each year. Therefore, Only the audio book is resisting in the face of a settlement of the digital book. Consequently, a decline in the paper book. Moreover, In this gloomy context. Furthermore, publishers and authors denounce the arrival of AI and the refusal of the GAFAM to respect the rights of those who write and sell books.

In May 2000. In addition, at the 26th International Congress of Publishers gathered in Buenos Aires, the vice-president of Microsoft, Dick Brass, told 700 professionals gathered to hear that in 2018, we would no longer sell a single book or a single newspaper printed on paper. Furthermore, The news went around the world but anxiety fell a few months later. For example, and the “at this point, it no laptop ceased, for a time, to be considered the gravedigger of the book.

With the start of the digital tablets. Therefore, then readers, in 2007-2008, fear was specified, and it was the electronic book that concentrated new phobias. Moreover, These seemed to be confirmed. For example, in 2014, when in the United States, the sale of dematerialized novels exceeded, for the first time, that of the old-fashioned printed books in the form of notebooks sewn together.

The “dematerialized” expression is however unfit because a digital file is made of very real, although invisible material. In addition, It has conquered the spirits by concentrating the fears inspired by the material invisible to the naked eye. Therefore, such as nanoparticles or electromagnetic waves.

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Five years later, however, the papier book returned to the top “at this point, it no of sales and, since then, he has continued to regain strength, in particular thanks to the dynamism of the second-hand market. Therefore, From Japan. from South Korea to Western Europe and the United States, the observation is the same: unlike the darkest predictions, the book is not dead.

Neither the laptop. nor the readers, nor the digital files replaced the use of the codex which appeared in the 2nd century AD. (NDR: Before putting on the shape of the notebook. codex, the book presented itself in the West as a roll or volume But other supports, the clay tablet, the wooden panel or the stone stele had been used.)

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An unexpected new competitor, the audio book – "at this point, it no

While generation Y was characterized by an immoderate use of SMS, the message written at the speed of a flash by unleashed “little thumbs” (according to the expression of “at this point, it no the philosopher Michel Serres, professor at the University of Stanford, who thus designated the teenagers typing messages on their smartphone. See see Little thumbThe apple tree, 2012.). the next, the generation Z prefers to transmit vocal messages, perhaps announcing an anthropological change in the process of being accomplished before our eyes.

Just as hand writing has practically disappeared. that mental calculation gives way to calculates of mobile phones, the habit of using a keyboard begins to decrease.

However. going from the typewriter to the computer and mobile phone, the hand had continued to print its movement at the thought which referred to the origins of humanity and to the manufacture of the first tools. If. suddenly, this organ of which the prehistorian André Leroy-Gourhan said that he had spurted thought, ceases to be used in daily life, after having considerably regressed in agriculture and industry, its consequences for the development “at this point, it no of the intellect will be irreversible. (see André Leroy-Gourhan, Technique and language. Gesture and speechParis, Albin Michel, 1964.)

However. artificial intelligence has added an element of weight to all these mutations, gradually replacing the task of the translator then that of the articles editor and, soon, the author of books easily substitutable for each other. Worse: today. she trains by swallowing millions of pounds and barely digested them, to offer her content to all those attracted by her low cost.

It is in this context that the progress of the audio book takes on its full meaning. In Germany. the country of Goethe and Schiller but also of Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht and Günther Grass, the number of strong readers (more than 24 pounds read each year) went from 36 million in 2013 to 25 million in 2023, a loss of about a third. At this rate. we wonder if “at this point, it no book lovers will remain beyond 2050, despite the good resistance of the physical bookstores which have found a momentary but fragile parade, the increase in prices of the paper book.

In Sweden. the figures are even more alarming since in 2024 the audio book would have represented 62 % of the sales of books, the Booktok community of the Tik Tok network proving incapable of preventing this real transfer from one reading mode to another. As with music or television series, it is also streaming, subscription, which benefits the most. Suddenly. the platforms, such as Spotify, the main competitor of Amazon, are organized to ask their AI to absorb the available audio books catalogs and to offer them to the public and thus drain new customers to them.

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AI, new gargantua of the book

When the Google search engine decided to blindly scan library containing “at this point, it no hundreds of thousands of volumes, from the years 2005-2010, the Californian firm refused to differentiate between recent books, subject to copyright legislation, and books fell into the public domain.

The machines used worked automatically, without human intervention responsible for checking the expiration date of the copyright. Present on all the papier books, the latter protects the literary property shared by the publisher and the author. This property runs during the life of the author. ceases 70 years after his death in the countries of the European Union. However. if the writer concedes his heritage law, his moral law cannot be sold to a third party and allows him, as his beneficiaries, to intervene if his work is mutilated or censored.

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The Netéconomie giant argued fair use To ask the courts to grant an exception, for “at this point, it no an educational or scientific basis, to its universal library. Free digital libraries. Gallica in France, Europeanea in Europe and Digital Public Library of America in the United States, have emerged to counter the Google library. They respect copyright. only digitize the works that have fallen into the public or “orphans”, that is to say, the author is not found.

Today. faced with the unions of authors and publishers who attack him in court, Meta (Facebook plus Instagram), the Empire of Marc Zuckerberg, invokes the fair use To justify his refusal to respect the laws on literary property.

To train his AI. named Llama, Meta made him download millions of files present in the catalogs of Amazon and other online sales platforms without the courts of the United States finding it. Inging both paper books. electronic files, AI will not experience any difficulty in engulfing the audio books already on the “at this point, it no market, then, after having rejected them, in producing them themselves, from synthetic voices, thanks to their prodigious memory.

At this stage. it is no longer the death of the book that we should fear but that of the writer, the Creator, that, man or woman, who uses his sensitivity and his intelligence to invent the works which, tomorrow, will enter the anthologies of literature.

Yesterday presented in the form of epics (theIliad et Odyssey). then poems (from Ronsard or du Bellay), plays (Corneille, Molière and Racine) and novels (from Balzac to Zola and Musso), the works of the mind migrated on all the supports, rollers of parchment with digital file and audio book. However, at no time did these material changes threatened the author in his existence or his essence.

In 1967-1968. Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault had announced the death of the author but they aimed at the triumph “at this point, it no of writing which supposes that the writer became invisible and ceases to be a kind of God ex Machina Permanently intervening in the story. For these two thinkers. the author was also a recent social construction, which appeared in the 18th century, at the same time as voted laws concerning literary property.

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By attacking the remuneration which brought this social category to emerge. recognized by laws and protected by the courts since the end of the 18th century, AI could well reveal itself as its true gravedigger. However, this technology seems, for the moment, unable to create new literary genres with the qualities required to win.

In this way. the book retains its powers of seduction, and, since the support of the voice dear to the heroes of the anticipation novel Fahrenheit 451 seems able to reach increasingly broad “at this point, it no audiences, it is the audio book which, tomorrow, may prevent AI from destroying everything in its path.

At the end of the Ray Bradbury Ray Bradbury. who describes a burning state the books, the defenders of printed culture learn by heart each one a novel and thus become of the Livre Mommes whose voice preserves the humanity of barbarism.

On condition. however, that the actors and actors who record these books today are recognized by the courts the indisputable faculty of adding to the text read the particular grain of their voice, whether it is that of Louis Jouvet so recognizable or that of all those who participate in this marriage between sound and imagination intended to produce emotion.

Jean-Yves Mollier

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