As part of the London Word Festival, a night will be devoted to looking at what the library of the more »

Dickens no doubt lost sleep over these many happy American readers who paid little for their books and for whom books by English authors were particularly cheap to buy. The Land of the Free began to look to him like the land of the freeloaders.

It is a banality to reflect that the illusion of continuous technological progress is just that; the same can be said of economic growth. So what other futures might publishing have? And what if those futures look more like the past?

Some people, my parents included, believe that the e-book is a rather pointless invention that will “never replace a real book” (huge emphasis on the word “real”).

If we take a look at why the iPad, Kindle and the original favourite, the paper-based novel exist, then we are able to make better comparisons.

Electric Literature has now released an iPad edition, ElectricLit FREE, featuring enhanced video playback, a built-in audiobook, live readings by Electric Literature authors, full-colour images, large-screen design and interactive graphics.

If I can read on my new iPhone4, then why would I bother to invest in an iPad? It is after all, just a big iPhone but with less features isn’t it?

Literary magazines have a very interesting place in this collection of stranded dodgems, because they are hedged in by books and magazines and newspapers which are all about to be pitched headlong into a new digital framework.

To my mind, it’s pay what you can, not pay what you want. Change the verb and you change the game. I know the phrase sounds very Soviet, and, significantly, it turns out it’s much harder than you’d think to evaluate for yourself what you can pay.

At the moment I’m working on a website – Organic Peas And Orderly Queues – all about the agonies and more »