NEXT WEEK, I’M DUE TO GIVE A TALK on (ahem) “The Future of the Book”. It sounds pretty impressive, doesn’t it? I’m impressed, anyway, because Margaret Atwood is also on the panel, so I figure that there will be a) serious discussion and b) quite a lot of fun.

However, when you are called on to have discussions about the future of things, it generally means that the things in question are seen to be in some kind of trouble. Those of us who read books — or indeed write them — could be allowed to feel just a prickle of anxiety. We think of Farenheit 451, or Roald Dahl’s amusingly sinister little tale the Great Automatic Grammatizator, in which writers are rendered superfluous by machines. Is the private experience that arises between the reader and the book about to go the way of the typewriter ribbon?

Call me Pollyanna, but I don’t think so.

Why? Because readers will never want to abandon the pure, sensual pleasure that books can give them. Recently, I’ve been reading Patrick White — a belated discovery. A few years ago, my husband brought a copy of Riders in the Chariot back from the author’s native Australia, a first edition that he found for a few dollars in a secondhand shop. Most of my delight in this peculiar, remarkable book stems from the electricity of its prose — but a fair proportion also comes from the well-balanced type set on creamy, heavy paper and the Sidney Nolan painting that makes such an arresting cover. I feel content just holding it in my hands.

We are happy to spend cash on cars and cashmere — why not books? I promise you it’s worth it. Last week, Robert Bringhurst’s The Tree of Meaning — discussed in these pages not long ago by Jeanette Winterson — won its author and publisher the Alcuin Society’s First Prize for book design in the nonfiction category. Bringhurst’s essays are a wonder: but so is the book, created by the author in cooperation with Andrew Steeves of the Gaspereau Press. Not convinced that type offset on wove paper, set in Giovanni di Faccio, makes a difference? Try it and see that the future of the author and the future of the book won’t go their separate ways yet.

Erica Wagner and others will speak at the Royal Festival Hall on April 17 at 7.30pm. gaspereau.com; alcuinsociety.com

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy