You turn your back...

And 8 days have vanished. How people manage to blog, twitter and live so they have something to share is beyond me.

Mind you, I have been busy sending out lots of copies of the wonderful Nod off in Portuguese. I swear you won't have seen such a yummy cover. And the CD is pink too. You can even look inside the booklet if you visit our main page. This is thanks to the wonderful issuu.com.

Whilst my back was turned, the London Book Fair came and went. The term 'industrious' was used to describe it, which made me think that what with the credit crunch and all that, people had to actually work rather than schmooze.

As usual, talk revolved around how to make money out of e-books. This is going to be quite a difficult thing as I am sure most people assume that an e-book is just the by-product of a physical book. My feeling is that the e-readers are going to go the way of Clive Sinclair's C5. As phone screens get slicker and more postcard sized, people are going to use these. The article that Bookbrunch highlights today about Amazon gobbling up iPhones e-book reader seems to support this.

In a way, publishers are shooting themselves in the foot by undervaluing their books. Take a a Dictionary. Its rrp is £25 but you see it for sale at a staggering 75% discount. If a customer sees the physical object worth so little, why should they feel that an e-version of it will be worth nearer the cover price?

Publishers need to come up with a product that the punter wants to pay money for. I suspect punters want e-books for free. Which means a bit of a stand-off until someone comes up with the magic formula. At that point there will be an almighty scramble to get on the e-band wagon. Perhaps it's as simple as giving a free 'real' book with every e-book.