Will people ever really prefer to read a novel on a digital device rather than in hard copy? Why? Personally speaking, I can’t ever imagine using the Google Library service for anything other than research purposes. In that sense, it’s genius. But I’m an old-fashioned gal who likes books made of paper not zeros and ones.

That doesn’t mean to say I’m not keenly following Google’s progress, however. The latest in the saga is reported by the Guardian today. It’s all rather fascinating, and I don’t know which side I fall on at the moment.

It does make me wonder, though, why publishers, rather than carping on at Google for digitising the novels for which the IP belongs to someone else, aren’t investigating alternative distribution solutions that work for them, and their authors, before it’s too late and Google has taken over their world.

Or maybe they are, and I just don’t know about it because I’ve got my head stuck in a book all the time. Always a possibility.