The power of print
<p>It's interesting how two non-events in the publishing world have recently made headlines.<br />
In Florida, Pastor Terry Jones did not in the end burn any ­copies of the Koran. While 10,000 miles away, in Piccadilly ­Circus, Tony Blair did not turn up to sign copies of his memoir, <i>A Journey</i>, to save the public and the police "a lot of hassle".</p>
<p>It's hard to say which of these two individuals I would less want to be stuck in a lift with. The pastor might have a name out of Monty Python but there was nothing funny about his threat and it's shocking how one deranged non-entity can now inform the world news. Headlines, cartoons, leader columns, phone-calls from generals and presidents. And yet his church had just 50 full-time members!</p>
<p>As for Blair, 25% of the country apparently believe that he should be indicted for war crimes and I'm still amazed that anyone should be interested in his self-serving and strangely written memoirs. I have mentioned this before but politicians don't seem to notice that when they're gone . . . they're gone. You might notice that Peter Mandelson has already dropped out of <i>The Bookseller</i>'s Top 50 list; evidently <i>The Third Man</i> didn't have quite the lasting power of, say, Stieg Larsson. It's actually quite a rare animal (Clarke, Crossman, Mullin) who produces a political book of any lasting worth.</p>
<p>That said, I was sorry that the signing didn't happen. Iain Banks, John Pilger and others had tried to persuade Waterstone's to cancel the event, stating it would "seriously harm its own reputation as a respectable bookseller". I'm almost phobic in my dislike of Blair but I still think that writers trying to ban other writers is unhealthy and odd. And celebrity signings can only help the trade in these difficult times.</p>
<p>It seems to me that these two, unconnected non-events ­actually tell us quite a lot about the way we're heading.</p>
<p>First, 24-hour news and the internet have combined to give individual protesters powers that are disproportionate and dangerous. There was a time when a bug-eyed fanatic (Jones, not Blair) would not have dominated world news and when the mere threat of a demonstration would not cause an event to be cancelled.</p>
<p>But the wider lesson is a more salutary one for those of us in the publishing business and goes all the way back to 10th May 1933. That was when 25,000 "non-German" books were burned in a mass demonstration organised by the Nazis. The fact is that even today, if you want a symbol of everything that is civilised, everything that goes to the heart of humanity, you still need to look no further than a book.<br />
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