that they find interesting, they find inspiring. and i think if you don t have that as part of the mix, then publishing would indeed fall down that sort of rather perilous slope that you re describing. but, actually, i ve been having this conversation since 1990. everybody wails that the book is going to die, that fiction is homogenizing, that we will have no creativity. but actually, there have been moments when that appears to be a little bit true at the moment. we have bestseller lists dominated by romance writing, but actually underneath it is bubbling a huge ferment of great, great creativity. and that s what we promote. 0ne one last element of this sort of cultural battleground that we ve been exploring. do you welcome the idea in your bookshops of selling books, classic books by well known authors that have been re edited with a view to sensitivity? and in recent times, the most clear example has been roald dahl, which puffin books thought it was going to re offer to the public
and all the rest. but with books it isn t. perhaps there are other factors. i mean, for a start, you can download pretty much any book that s ever been written in a millisecond on a smart tablet. so, that s convenience. there s also a, sort of, environmental question. i mean, you make profits from selling books. books, ultimately, are made of carbon. and, frankly, they do look, in our efforts to get to a carbon zero world, a decarbonized world, they look like something we should get rid of. i think i would sort of argue, though, that they have an enduring and remarkably durable role to continue to play, if it s a good book. i mean, i think that, ideally, as booksellers, we sell good books. well, it doesn t matter if it s a good book or a bad book. well, no, but a good book goes onto a bookshelf. it s reused multiple times. and at its apogee, it s obviously in a public library and it s read multiple, multiple times and lent. but even our own personal libraries, our children read them, w
this is bbc news. we will have the headlines and all of the main news stories at the top of the hour straight after this. welcome to hardtalk. i m stephen sackur. in a world fixated with the unstoppable march of the digital revolution, it s kind of refreshing to look at what s happening in the old school business of selling books. ink on paper has not been eliminated by the rise of the e book, and the good old bricks and mortar bookshop hasn t been wiped out by online shopping.
this is bbc news. we will have the headlines and all of the main news stories at the top of the hour straight after this. welcome to hardtalk. i m stephen sackur. in a world fixated with the unstoppable march of the digital revolution, it s kind of refreshing to look at what s happening in the old school business of selling books. ink on paper has not been eliminated by the rise of the e book, and the good old bricks and mortar bookshop hasn t been wiped out by online shopping. my guest today, james daunt,
is going to die, that fiction is homogenizing, that we will have no creativity. but actually, there have been moments when that appears to be a little bit true at the moment. we have bestseller lists dominated by romance writing, but actually underneath it is bubbling a huge ferment of great, great creativity. and that s what we promote. one last element of this sort of cultural battleground that we ve been exploring. do you welcome the idea in your bookshops of selling books, classic books by well known authors that have been re edited with a view to sensitivity? and in recent times, the most clear example has been roald dahl, which puffin books thought it was going to re offer to the public with many of dahl s most loved and famous characters characterized in different ways so that,