With all due respect, you're 101% wrong.
I've been running a ereader/ebook/publishing blog for the last 5 years so let me share a few points.
1) eReaders and reading tablets are getting people to read MORE. They are also getting people who have never read to read.
2) Lots of the new big hits (as someone else mentioned above) are adding new readers - HArry Potter, Hunger Games, 50 Shades, Twilight.
3) What eReaders and ebooks do is they reduce the friction. Buy anytime, buy cheap, classics for free.
For a long time the problem was that other forms of entertainment were evolving while books were getting killed by Publishers.
All that's changed now.
4) The world is growing bigger and bigger in terms of both readers and readers who want books in English. China & India alone will become a bigger market than the US for English books in 20-30 years.
5) We're at the early stages of the current revolution. I don't know how much 'money' there will be for authors. However, the amount of readers will be MASSIVE and getting to them will be SO MUCH EASIER.
*****
You're literally at the beginning of a golden age of reading and writing. If your primary motivation is to squeeze money out of readers or books or authors, then things arne't good because there's going to be a lot of chaos. But if your primary motivation is either to read books or to write books and be read - then you couldn't be born at a better time.
Seriously, think about it. You can publish a book and market it cheaply and get it into people's hands and can get people reading your book from the get go. No having to impress a Publisher to get published.
*****
All the stuff you hear is a product of the consumer creating machine. They don't want people reading because then they don't remain sheep. That's why you see people who are looking to make money push the propaganda that reading is dead or that going into writing is stupid or that books aren't cool.
Look at the actual facts. At what's really going on.