We're doomed, Captain Mainwaring!

And so we are, you stupid boy, so we are!


Sameer Rahin in his column in The Telegraph predicts the end of the traditional bookshop, the end of the bound book, the end of the full-time professional author. And who are we to doubt him when all around us we see evidence of it? WE keep saying it ourselves. Yes, I know we are old miseries and that 'something else' will come along to compensate as change engulfs us - look at the recovery of music industry, for goodness sake - but the message is now a steady drumbeat: the way in which writing is presently created, delivered and consumed is as good as dead.

We often make the point here, over mugs of warm tea, that everybody has a camera nowadays and is therefore a photographer, and everybody has a computer and is therefore a writer. It's easy to snap away and to type away like artists possessed. But then what?

Have a look at what Sameer has to say and be depressed, be very depressed. If you care about writing... and books, that is.