[Richard Herley]

This discussion is fascinating, if I may say so. What needs to be taken into account also are the changes in the publishing trade. These were evident as long as thirty years ago: now they're impossible to avoid.

In 1970, most publishing houses were fairly small concerns, run by and large by people who enjoyed what they did and cared about books. Yes, they made money, and yes they had to be hard-nosed, but they were prepared to take a chance and invest in a new author. They also carried an author's backlist, sometimes keeping titles in print that only sold 100 copies a year.

Repeated takeovers, starting in the late seventies, have left the industry dominated by a few big companies. Random House is a perfect example: it's huge, encompassing many different imprints. Accountants tend now to loom large in their strategic decisions, and the imprints themselves have less and less leeway in signing new talent. They want best-sellers, because the economy of scale makes one J. K. Rowling, selling 10,000,000 copies, a much more profitable prospect than 100 writers selling 100,000 copies each. And these days, 100,000 copies would be a very respectable print-run indeed.

From a new author's point of view, it's incredibly hard to break in, and not just for that reason. Before word-processors were invented, it was at least physically quite difficult to commit 75,000 or 100,000 words to the page. Even on an electric typewriter, that's quite an achievement, especially if -- as is always the case -- your MS needs repeated drafts.

Nowadays the number of would-be authors has skyrocketed. Many of them, alas, are not as talented as their mothers/significant others would have them believe, but still they submit their books for publication.

The result is that publishers are overwhelmed by submissions. Beautifully typed, spellchecked, laser-printed rubbish pours into their postrooms every working day. Somewhere among all the packages there may be some gold: but how to find it? In fact, the majority of publishers now refuse to accept unsolicited submissions at all, and will only take work from an agent.

In turn, agents are being snowed under. We are even seeing the emergence of agents who will find you an agent who will find you a publisher. It's madness.

The upshot of all this is that fewer and fewer talented writers, born writers who have laboured long and hard at the craft, the kind of people who would quickly have found a market in 1970, are shut out in the cold. Most of them give up in despair, unable even to find an agent.

The electronic distribution of books allows readers to decide for themselves what is good and what is not. Word of mouth (or, nowadays, word of mouse) is what makes a good book a successful book. If an author has a Web site, the discerning reader can tell in fifteen seconds whether the author is literate; if the Web site tempts the reader to browse, there is even a chance that a sale of some description can be made. The exact model for selling ebooks has yet to be found. It varies all the way from tightly DRM'd files (of which, if you're lucky, you can scan an extract before purchasing) to free downloads and pay-on-your-honour.

As Steve Jordan has remarked, authors write to be read. The money is usually secondary; often it's merely the means to allow the author to go on writing. The wide distribution of an author's books can only lead to their being more widely read.

When a paper book is sold, the author gets one royalty, and not a very big one at that. Afterwards the book can be resold, lent to any number of people, or put on the shelves of a public library. All of these activities deprive the author of royalties: yet he also benefits because he gains more readers and widens the audience for his next offering.

My own view is that ebooks should be freely available and that readers should pay only if they choose. Given the nature of reading itself, this shareware model is likely to have even more success than it does with computer software. I also believe that ebook displays are in their infancy. In ten years' time they will be cheap and widely available. For much of people's reading, the choice between an airport-bookstall paperback and a DRM-free ebook will be a no-brainer.