IN PRAISE OF THE E-BOOK The writer and creator of the Inspector Wexford series, Ruth Rendell, has had a seat in the House of Lords since 1997, and is a very grand person indeed. Writing in the autumn issue of the ALCS newsletter, she puts her finger on what she calls 'that awful Catch 22 situation' that seems designed to discourage young writers rather than encourage them. Simply, it is that you can't get published without an agent, yet you can't get an agent until you are published. Agents and publishers seem to be asking themselves not 'Is this a good well-written book?', but 'Has this book a chance of winning the Booker?' It is one further step in the book trade's slow funeral march towards the grave of extinction. I hope I am not being unfair. Some excellent books do manage to make it into print, but the conditions of publication are too restrictive for health. There is a similarity to the fashion industry, where all the participants, from the models to the journalists who write about them, speak an arcane language intelligible only to those who work within its narrow confines. The majority of us are never going to wear those outfits or read those books: they are not attractive enough. An answer is at hand: the e-book. The book trade, unsurprisingly, is wailing about a 'lowering of standards' and 'opening the floodgates of mediocrity', but to me and to very many others it is an escape route from the Catch 22 situation mentioned by Baroness Rendell of Babergh. It does not mean that any old rubbish can be self-published. Amazon (who sell six books of mine on Kindle) do have the power of veto. And it does mean that their range is very much wider, for the simple reason that with no outlay to speak of, they do not have to ask themselves the question at the back of every hardback publisher's mind: 'Are we going to cover our costs?' Their policy means that their selling price can be a fraction of what it would be in hardback, and the author's royalty higher. I went for the self-publishing option after numerous rejections within the traditional industry. Obviously my books are never going to win the Booker Prize. I do not regret my decision. I only wish the Kindle had come along sooner.