Sarsaparilla

Sarsaparilla is a new, visually-attractive literary blogsite, which already has good posts. I thought Wendy's post on the demise of the novel was provocative. This mainly concerns a claimed decline in the quality of the modern novel and the terrible fact that modern writers need not be poor.

I am also interested (as an economist) in the demand for reading novels. There are many competitive electronic media out there and the value of people's time has risen. Is there any data on book sales and reading habits that tells us about the impact of television, the internet and magazines on the demand for the novel?