Labour Party Conference debate 2010: What is the future of the Book?

The What is the future of the book? debate, held by ALCS and the All Party Writers Group at the Labour fringe conference has been hailed a success after delegates and MPs turned up in force to listen to the panel discussion held at the Labour Party Conference.

Those attending the fringe event heard from: Denis Macshane MP for Rotherham and Vice Chair of the All Party Writers Group; writer Stella Duffy; David Lammy MP for Tottenham; Sarah Hunter, Head of UK Public Policy at Google; Richard Mollet, currently BPI Director of Public Affairs and Chief Executive Designate of the Publishers Association and Gerry Sutcliffe MP for Bradford South.

A writer of over 11 novels, Stella Duffy, opened the What is the future of the book? session by paying homage to the public library system, stating that she would not be the published author she is today if it had not been for access to her books in libraries. 

 She went on to say:

“It breaks my heart to see what the current government is doing, and what we are all doing by not standing up enough supporting the PLR.”

The author also went on to make a plea for writers to be properly remunerated when their work appeared on the web.

“You can’t get into an empty cab and say “take me somewhere for free.” There’s an assumption that all writers want to be read, whether we get paid for it or not – If we keep on in that mindset we will end up in a situation where only the rich are able to write,” she commented.

The difficulties in protecting those who endeavour to write while at the same time ensuring that what they have written is freely accessible to consume were highlighted by David Lammy MP.

He said:

“In the end the technicalities of this debate are how we reward and support artists and how we give them control in this new century. This is about licensing. This is about ensuring that authors get the rightful money that they are entitled to for their works, that their work is not exploited when we move books around the world at the touch of a button.”

Standing up for the technology firms that have led the digital charge Google’s Sarah Hunter stated that the online distribution of books will become the dominant way of reading in the future. While recognising that people have a love affair with the printed book, the majority has to concede that online buying is easier and neither are there problems with storage.

Ms Hunter said:

“Online is about more people reading your stuff and more ways of it being available; the limited amount of space in a bookshop means that only a tiny portion of the books available are available to buy immediately. With new ways of buying books you have so much more choice. I think it’s really an opportunity that we should embrace.”

However Richard Mollet drew on his experience of the record industry and stated that we should not exaggerate the speed of change. He said:

“Whether or not it [digital books] will be utterly dominant or just another way of the consumer getting what they want still remains to be seen. I am confident that the digital revolution in publishing will be a much happier story that it has been in music.”

The debate was summed up by MP for Bradford South Gerry Sutcliffe who stated that we must work with changes in technology while at the same time emphasising the need to protect our creative industries and artists.
 

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