The demise of the written word is predicted every couple of years since the inception of the Internet. I remember reading an gloomy article about how young people hoping to become internationally known published authors à la Stephen King should forget about that dream and settle for making moderate amounts of money with a book they could only hope to make it in a country or two.

And yet, while there has definitely been a slow down, there doesn’t seem to be signs of its impending doom. Quite the contrary: the written word seems to be here for awhile, as authors like Audrey Niffenegger make a killing on book deals, even on books that have yet been written.

As IHT reports: Audrey Niffenegger receives $5 million advance for second novel. FIVE MILLION? For a book that isn’t even finished? During an economic crisis? Granted, if her second book is anything like the first one, Niffenegger deserves every penny; The Time Traveler’s Wife was a beautiful yet very atypical love story written in such a way that at the end of it, one can’t really accept that one has read all of the 700+ pages. Which makes me all the more excited for Her Fearful Symmetry, which is described as: a supernatural story about twins who inherit an apartment near a London cemetery and become embroiled in the lives of the building’s other residents and the ghost of their aunt, who left them the flat.

Be still my heart. I can’t wait to get my hands on that book!

Read the ITH article here.