Another way of looking at it is that Simon and Schuster’s willingness to experiment with new media is indicative of their nervousness about the future of print. If you read the New York Times article, what they’re trying to do is grab some of the audience which is currently giving print the go-by and going to places like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter for its entertainment. Hence the “social networking” aspect of Vooks, which otherwise seems to have very little connection with their content.

My feeling is that traditional print publishing is in a state of turmoil. So many people are now buying books online that High Street bookstores can now only afford to stock big-selling titles, which means that the marketplace is increasingly dominated by film, television and celebrity tie-ins. Online, on the other hand, as a result of the Long Tail, Amazon will stock absolutely anything, because they don’t have to physically stock it at all, which means no overheads. As a result of this, the online marketplace is increasingly flooded by self-published titles which sell in tiny numbers. It seems likely that in ten years from now the commercial publishing industry will have completely given up trying to “discover” new authors: they’ll confine themselves to publishing the book of the TV cooking series, the autobiography of the sporting celebrity, the latest book by an author who has already sold millions, and so forth – and the only way any new blood will get into the system will be if people have already managed to sell lots of copies of their self-published work, whereupon they will be seen as a safe bet and offered a contract.

Where does this leave hyperliterature? Probably in the same position as all other forms of creative writing. If you can demonstrate through your own efforts that your work can command a sufficiently large audience, someone will come out of the woodwork to offer you offer you money for it. You then have to make up your mind whether you want to tell them to get stuffed, and carry on as you are, or run for cover and buy yourself a house. It would be nice to think that efforts to foist hyperliterature best-sellers on the marketplace top-down, through a combination of slick technology and heavyweight marketing techniques, will go belly-up of their own accord. On the other hand, it worked for Harry Potter. If something gets enough publicity, it doesn’t have to be great – it just has to be good enough.