Okay, so the title might be a bit of an exaggeration, but here is my question to you for this week, dear reader:

What are you doing to help your fellow writer?

There has been a heck of a lot of chatter around the blogosphere lately about the death of the publishing industry, how everything will soon be in ebook form, that there will be no agents or publishers and so on and so forth.

Now, I don't see this as being a realistic future for the world of literature, and I don't think the entire industry is about to go down the gurgler in a couple of days time.

However, there do seem to be some trends pointed out by industry professionals.  The most concerning for me, as an unpublished writer, is some agents reporting that publishers are hesitant to take on debut authors. 

Now at this stage I don't think it's too much of a problem, if you write a great book, I think it will still sell.  But this emerging trend is not something that I would like to see grow.  At all.  Ever.

So here is my proposal:

If you're a writer, either aspiring or published, don't spend next month lurking around writing blogs letting all of the doom and gloom get to you.  Instead, I challenge you to go out and buy a book by a debut author.  And don't just buy it and forget about it!  READ it, discuss it with others (online or offline), recommend it if you enjoy it. 

(Okay, we can still go to the blogs - I will be! But do this AS WELL!)

I would hope that there exists some sort of community spirit amongst writers, knowing how hard we all work and what a challenge it can be.  So, how about we support each other, and show the publishing industry that debut authors are still appealing to readers, and that we want more!

Because there will be no point in complaining about not being able to get published if you didn't support the industry in the first place...