I used to know someone who offered an up-market interior design service. She would literally buy books by the yard at auctions - grabbing whatever rubbish was going, as long as it was old and leather-bound, because it looked like a library to her City clients.

She had a few yards in her own house. The historical fact of holding a two hundred year old title was interesting, the content often less so.

I have way, way too many paper books in the house. I have way, way too many books on hard disk too, but they don't take up nearly as much space, which makes them easier to live with.

I also have a 30" monitor, and it's easier to read books on a big display than it is to read them in print.

Publishing has already become MBA-ised over the last couple of decades, so exotic or creative work is getting much less shelf space than it used to.

However, there are sites that promote - and pay for - new writing online, and I suspect we'll be seeing more of those in the future, perhaps linked to blogs and forums. So the idea of a 'book' is going to fade, and be replaced by more amorphous writing.