Can Tony Blair Save the World of Books At the beginning of A Journey, Tony Blair boasts that he has "the soul of a rebel". Last week, he made good on that boast by conducting a gravity-defying act of literary presumption--pubhshing a hardback of some 720 pages, priced at ~25, tricked out with index, acknowledgments and 32 pages of photographic plates. According to Cathy Rentzenbrink, manager of the Richmond Waterstone’s: "These sales are brilliant and really exciting. You don’t often have customers almost breaking down the door to buy a book, but Blair is totally outselling Mandelson. I’ve not seen anything this big since Harry Potter or Dan Brown. This looks like the Christmas book of the year." She adds: "It’s very rare for a hardback to outsell a future paperback, but this might be one of those exceptions." Rentzenbrink says she does not know its Amazon discount, or if there’s a significant ebook and audiobook sale. What matters is that a fat hardback with a big print run is actually selling. Go into any bookshop today and you will find the unmistakable evidence of a business in the midst of a collective nervous breakdown: hardbacks discounted at 50%; heaped tables of "3 for 2"; and other hints of the death of print: andiobooks and advertisements for the Sony Reader, or the Elonex touch screen, or the Cybook Opus. This year, there are more than 20 competing e-readers. Across the Atlantic, Blair’s chunky memoir (回忆录) will seem even more antique. The American reading public is adopting the ebook with the enthusiasm of a great cousumer society. Wherever you go in the US, the electronic print of the hand-held screen glows like fairytale magic. Ebook sales are soaring, accompanied by terrible predictions about the future of publishing. The picture is all the more disturbing because it’s so hard to interpret, with competing diagnoses. Are we in intensive care or the morgue (太平间) Since 2000, the Anglo-American book business has been rocked by great disturbance. Google has digitised some 10 million titles. Barnes and Noble is for sale. Borders, bankrupt in the UK, clings on in the US. Here, Waterstone’s parent company, HMV, wants to sell. Amazon’s market share continues to soar. Asda, Tesco and the supermarket chains are said to be draining the life out of independent bookselling. In the US, it’s claimed that ebooks are now outselling many hardbacks. By the end of this year, 10.3 million Americans are expected to own e-readers, buying an estimated 100m ebooks. In the UK, electronic publishing lags behind the US, but many of the brightest publishing brains, notably Enhanced Editions, are looking hard at the potential of the book as application. Only a few people would dispute that it’s a matter of time before the ebook joins the iPod and the mobile phone as a vital component of the way we live. Ebooks, indeed, are already integral to the iPad and last week Amazon launched a sales campaign for its latest Kindle. Deplore this if you must, but be prepared: even the Oxford English Dictionary is now conceding that its third edition, 21 years in the making, will be published not on paper but online. The ￡25 hardback of Blair’s A Journey will certainly become a traditional bestseller. But many nervous industry observers are watching to see how many ebooks it sells. Within the book trade itself, all the main players (agents, editors, booksellers) have converted to e-reading, and now some authors are exploring the potential of the new technology. Stephen Fry is said to be developing a revolutionary application for his forthcoming autobiography. Yet many traditional publishers privately say that printed books will continue to be manufactured, bought and cherished. The buzz surrounding last week’s Kindle launch raises the possibility that the book is about to become swallowed up by an "iPod moment" for literature, similar to the transformation wrought on the music industry by downloading. Who knows Here’s where gazing into the crystal ball for the biggest IT revolution in 500 years gets really difficult. Tim Waterstone, who has had an unusual sense of what the British book buyer wants, remains sceptical. He concedes that the reference book market (dictionaries, encyclopedias) is "certain to go online". But what about fiction Biography Poetry Children’s books "Personally," he says, "I don’t think so." Like many great booksellers, Waterstone is a cultural conservative. As he talks, he spots a paperback classic on his 17:year-old daughter’s bookshelves, and launches into the old defence of ink and paper. "That’s incredible value," says Waterstone. "She’s a child of the digital age and she’s still buying books." So what’s the future A long pause. "The only honest thing to say is: I really don’t know." Another innovator, the writer Will Serf--whose Walking to Hollywood, an introduction for the movie business, has just been published--is in no doubt. "I’ve unknowingly acquired a Kindle," says Serf, "and I find that everything I read on it, especially Stieg Larsson, becomes nonsense. I’m inclined to blame the technology. With no physical similarity I think the text loses its .weight." Serf confesses to being unsure how much of his own backlist is available in ebook form. Sells response to the e-reader is echoed on the shop floor of Waterstone’s. Next to a discreet sign advertising "reading accessories" I found Elizabeth Squires, a mother of two, hesitated to buy Blair. This would be a departure for her because she buys "20 or 30 new books a year, all paperback, all fiction". Half of these she gets from Amazon. Audiobooks "Strictly for the kids." An ebook "No. Why should I I haven’t got anything to read it on." Is she tempted "I’ve been thinking about buying the Kindle, but it would never replace my book collection. Book lovers will always love books. There’s something irreplaceabie about a book. It gives you a physical, even an aesthetic, experience. For me, it’s an emotional thing. My books are my friends. There’s something about having a book in bed, about holding it, even smelling it, that I could never get from an e-reader. Isn’t the first thing you do when you move house, to rearrange your books" Elsewhere, the rearrangement of the book trade continues quickly. Last week’s New York Times Book Review contained no fewer than three separate items about the death of print. But paradoxically, the age of digitisation is both a golden age of ink and a boom time for narrative, in many media, on countless "platforms", from blogs, audiobooks to television soaps and Facebook. Bookshops are changing. The worst are becoming novelty item and greetings card booth, but the good ones are selling more books than ever, and the publishers, cursing the climate and moaning as usual about the state of the harvest, show few signs of cutting back on their output. Blair’s success suggests that the book-buying public may talk digital but actually buy printed books.It is said that Stephen Fry is going to ______ A. develop a revolutionary application of e-reader B. continue to manufacture printing booksC. explore a new way to display his autobiographyD. sell his autobiography only online