Books do furnish a room but not for much longer if Jeff Bezos has his way

"Our vision," wrote the great prophet Bezos, introducing the Kindle way back when, "is that you should be able to read any book in any language that's ever been printed, whether it's in print or out of print, and you should be able to buy and get that book downloaded to your Kindle in less than 60 seconds."

This vision, hallelujah, is now all but realised. We are living in the Golden Age of the LCD, the Age of the Instabook, the End Times of Paper. By 2018, according to a report from accounting group PwC, the publishing industry will have been entirely tamed and bound, the ebook will have overtaken the pbook as our preferred reading device, and readers and writers will have been released from their paper-chained bondage. Each man his own priest; each man his own Kindle Direct self-publisher.