I don’t think society is in decline but my best friend is a university teacher and if you allow me an anecdote it’s become obvious to him in the past five years that first year students are less and less familiar with the written world and increasingly good with images and videos as a medium of communication. The shift seems real.

Long works of literature were always fairly niche. If you read the articles you will see that bestsellers are going from short to shorter rather a decline in the publication of long novels.