³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

I'm sitting here slightly shelf-shocked.

The new series of the Radio Wales book programme starts on Sunday... towards the end of probably the most dramatic year in the book world for three quarters of a century.

Not particularly dramatic in what we're reading - most of the year's bestsellers have been fairly predictable - but in how we're reading it.

And suddenly it's looking like the programme could be sounding dated, even before it starts. I mean... Phil the Shelf? The way things are going, this time next year half the population won't even have a shelf any more. Who needs it when you can carry your entire library in an inside pocket?

Who would have thought this time last year that the ebook would have eaten its way so deeply into the market that publishers would be talking about the impending death of the paperback? Who would have believed that a canny author can now earn a steady living without books or bookshops?

Phil Rickman surrounded by books

It'll never catch on, we were saying. It'll never win more than 10 per cent of book sales, and even that won't last.

People probably said the same about paperbacks when they were introduced in the 1930s. Who wants a book that only gets read once before its spine is all cracked and the cover's curling at the corners?

When the ebook first arrived, authors were the most contemptuous. Authors love real books. It's a great moment when you finally spot someone reading one of yours on the train. Now all you see is everybody bent over a piece of plastic the size of a DVD case with no picture on the front.

Depressing, huh?

But not for long. For some previously-unsung authors, it's been an unexpected new beginning. When the Net Book Agreement was scrapped, allowing shops to sell books at half price or less, only the bestsellers benefited. Big book chains, supermarkets and publishers could handle a reduced margin if they were guaranteed to sell hundreds of thousands of copies.

The ebook has changed all that because there are no production costs - no paper, no printers to pay, no warehouse-space required. This means that a publisher can offer any new ebook for as little as 50p, thus encouraging thousands more readers to take a punt on an unknown writer.

And - very worrying for publishers - an author can now do a deal direct with Amazon, which, with its Kindle e-reader, has already cornered 70 per cent of the ebook market. For the first time, an author doesn't need either a publisher or an agent to succeed. They still help, but they're no longer essential.

For several weeks this autumn the number one bestelling Kindle was by west Wales thriller writer Scott Mariani, who tells me he encouraged his publishers to cut the price as low as possible to reach new readers. It worked. They liked Scott... and looked around for his other books.

The Magic Of Christmas by one of this week's Phil the Shelf guests, Trisha Ashley from Conwy, is already scaling the Kindle charts like a mouse up a Christmas tree.

Later in the series we'll be running an entire programme about the ebook phenomenon... and there's a lot to talk about.

However, our first programme looks forward to Christmas reading, showing that, despite new technology, most readers are still seasonal traditionalists.

Maybe it's something to do with the continuing recession, but comfort-reading has been big this year, with the domestic love-story, One Day always prominent at a supermarket near you. Trisha Ashley's novel is a light romantic rural comedy with lots about Christmas pudding and other goodies (previously she's done chocolate) and a happy ending guaranteed. It's aimed at women, but men read it too - on their Kindles on the train, thus avoiding sneers from the Tom Clancy fan sitting opposite.

A traditional Christmas essentially is a Victorian Christmas, which is doubtless why Anthony Horowitz's publishers have just released his first - and, he insists last - Sherlock Holmes novel, The House Of Silk. He's on the programme, too.

And we also note the first publication in English of Daniel Owen's Fireside Tales, originally published as Straeon y Pentan in 1895, now translated by Adam Pearce.

Perfect material for a bit of Christmas Kindling...

Not for me, mind. I still don't own any kind of e-reader. I like cracked spines and curling pages. Especially at Christmas.

The new series of Phil the Shelf begins on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Wales on Sunday 13 November at 5pm, and will be available on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iPlayer for a week after transmission.