M. John Harrison on the next five years in SF publishing

I also suspect that we’ll see less fiction of all kinds. Everyone will have published their novel and discovered they aren’t going to get rich–or even noticed–by writing. The industry, especially in its middleclass form, ie traditional, paper-published litfic, saw peak remuneration in the 1990s and peak social status dividends in the first ten years of the new century. For the global middle classes, writing a book will increasingly become the equivalent of Victorian accomplishment culture–everyone, if you recall, had to be able to sing a bit, play an instrument, ride a horse, paint watercolours, whatever. The dancing masters & music teachers scraped a living out of it.

— M. John Harrison, New Worlds interview with M. John Harrison