Scarlet Whisper’s Publishing Predictions

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of posts written about the future of publishing. This weekend I also watched The Planet of the Apes and howled at the trailer for the 1980 crap-tastique movie The Apple, a dystopian pastische about the year 1994 (Watch out, this one will burn your eyes out!)

I’m not sure if it was the post-apocalyptic cinema or the glue I was sniffing, but I had an epiphany, a profound vision. Move over Nostradamus, Scarlet Whisper has seven predictions about the death (and resurrection) of print:

1. In 2012 (of course), a Malaysian scientist discovers Bibi, an orangutan capable of writing paranormal romances and techno-thrillers.

2  In 2014, after the Rand Corporation analyzes Bibi’s manuscripts against the slush pile, major publishing houses around the world begin to outsource selected projects to primates.

3. When Oprah’s book club pick, A Million Opposable Thumbs, a poignant memoir written by a red leaf monkey, skyrockets to the top of the NYT bestseller list, publishers begin to bypass agents and work directly with zookeepers in filling their lists.

4. Even as primates take over the industry, Sony capitalizes on the continued rise of e-books. Their banana shaped e-reader dominates the market. Each device comes preloaded with Stephen King’s Cell and Bibi’s first book, A Confederacy of Buttons.

5. In 2016, rabid neo-Luddites hack into Sony’s system and dump a virus into the big banana’s server. The conspiracy backfires when the virus causes banana readers to fall into a catatonic stupor after visually scanning the title page of any e-book. Biblio-zombies outnumber the uninfected within six months.

6. A death blow to publishing is struck when writer Joan Didion’s suffers a fatal heart attack after her book is passed over for the Pulitzer.  Bibi’s latest opus steals literature’s top prize.  The orangutan’s novel is comprised of one single word typset in Comic Sans: Meep.

6. By the fall of 2017, a ragtag cadre of librarians moves underground and operates small lending institutions. A handful of self-published authors are the only remaining uninfected human writers. These scribblers hide in bunkers and  study the simian  books. They learn to write.

7. In 2020, Optimus Primate, a silver Gibbon from Brooklyn, deactivates the virus by hurtling his body into Sony’s supercharged mainframe.  After the brain numbing banana readers are neutralized, publishing rises from the ashes. Although Optimus Primate’s heroics prove fatal, he is immortalized in an award winning, 666,000 word novel. Written by Scarlet Whisper.

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