Following on from my discussions with Andrew Robinson, then leader of the Pirate Party UK, I have had a brief exchange with his successor, Loz Kaye. Thanks to both for being prepared to come to what is surely foreign territory and give their views.

I have - as you might imagine - questions and disagreements I'd love to pursue, but that's a conversation which will run and run over the next few decades. So here you are: more from the Crow's Nest. Read more »

No prizes for guessing that the question I am currently being asked more than any other is whether the agency e-book sales model is legal.

The simple answer is that an agency arrangement, where publisher appoints agent to sell e-books on publisher's behalf at prices determined by publisher, can be legal. However, the arrangement must avoid certain potential pitfalls to comply with competition laws. Read more »

Denise Dwyer, Development Officer Access to Publishing at RNIB talks us through what publishers should be considering: a big political memoir was published recently to lots of comment and column inches. The day after publication I came across a post on an online forum by a keen reader who is blind. He would have loved, he said, to have been able to buy an electronic version of the book the previous day, so he could read it at the same time as everyone else and join in the debate. Read more »

Tim Spalding from LibraryThing writes provocatively about what will happen to the industry as ebooks make up an increasing proportion of our sales. In particular, he's interested in the feedback effects that kick in as ebook sales go up - leading to an ever-higher ebook proportion. Read more »