I was in my local branch of Waterstones' bookshops today, looking at the new hardback, nonfiction books. There must have been about 100 of them, each a great, scholarly piece of work. Then there were all the new paperback non-fiction, the new literary fiction. This was in the front part of the shop. Behind that, you had the established literary fiction. Behind that was the crime, sport, young-adult, science fiction and fantasy shelves. Adjacent was the children's section and upstairs was the rest of the non-fiction. This is quite a big branch, but it is not the biggest, and it does not contain all the books I want to read. I thought you would have to be mad to try and write a book. Some of those new hardback non-fiction books looked very interesting, but how many readers will they get? If you tried to write some piece of fiction, you would have to compete not only with living authors who managed to establish a reputation, but many of the dead. I think many people dream of writing a great, popular book, but it is as optimistic as panning for gold.