Author Cupcake Brown achieved literary fame with the true story of her experience of childhood prostitution and appalling poverty. Even established authors got in on the act: after having the blog-turned-book about her cooking adventures turned into the Nora Ephron film Julie & Julia, Julie Powell's new book is all about her adultery and her gruesome new hobby: butchery. No doubt she'll spare us no bone-crunching, blood-spurting detail.

She follows the trend of fellow memoirist Susanna Kaysen, who went from writing about her depression in the book-turned-film Girl, Interrupted... to telling all about her vagina (The Camera My Mother Gave Me). It seems like nothing is off-limits now and even as an avid reader of memoirs myself, I'm starting to think that maybe the old British stiff upper lip wasn't such a bad thing: what therapists call "boundaries" exist for a reason and maybe some of the tell-all authors who find spilling the beans so cathartic now will be embarrassed in later years that everyone knows all their deepest secrets. At the very least, in some cases their divulgences seem more like efforts to shock than attempts to tell a great story. Did whoever bought Vilar's memoir read further than the subtitle before reaching for the chequebook? 

Thank goodness then for a small backlash, headed up by writers like Carlene Bauer. Her new book Not That Kind of Girl is a response to the multitude of memoirs about being addicted, abducted, abused and/or sex obsessed. It's about a young woman who grew up regarding religion as important, turned down sex and drugs in her teens, had a mini-rebellion in her twenties, but ultimately came to believe that there's nothing wrong with being...well, kind of well-balanced. It echoes the message of Amy Krause Rosenthal's Encyclopaedia of an Ordinary Life, which states on the cover: "I have not survived against all odds. I have not lived to tell. I have not witnessed the extraordinary." Nonetheless, her book is the best memoir I have ever read.

Diane Shipley is a freelance journalist and and her website is www.dianeshipley.com

Julie Powell won the inaugural Blooker Prize (for the best book which originated as a blog) for Julie and Julia, the chronicle of her attempt to cook every recipe in Julia Child's culinary classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I within a year. She also won a film deal: the movie version of her book has been directed by Nora Ephron and will be out next year.

But if publishers and producers don't pick up on your perfect prose, you don't have to despair. Self-publishing has found a home on the internet, too, thanks to the proliferation of publish-on-demand (POD) websites that actually offer an impressive and inexpensive finished product: places like Lulu, Blurb or iUniverse will all furnish you with a printed copy (or several) of your masterpiece. While POD is unlikely to make you rich, it could help to make your name (you've heard of New York Times bestselling author Deepak Chopra, right?)

Chopra's not the only one who has taken an unconventional route to publishing success. When pulp horror author Scott Sigler's book deal with Time/Warner got canned in the economic downturn which followed 9/11, he decided to release his novels in serial form - as podcasts (downloadable audio content made available over the internet). After his first book Earthcore got over 10,000 subscribers, he released subsequent books the same way, with some episodes reaching an incredible 4 million downloads. He now has a major publishing deal and his last book got to number 7 on Amazon.com's sales list without any marketing spend. Sigler proves that controlling your own content can be extremely rewarding - and it's not just the 'little people' who think so. International bestselling author Jodi Picoult added podcasting to her website to make it more interactive, and Neil Gaiman and Meg Cabot have experimented with video to great effect. Getting to know the authors we love only makes us like them more.

And self-publishing isn't just for books. Once anyone who wanted to create a home-made 'zine was stuck pasting tatty pages together and photocopying them at their own expense. But now anyone, from professional publishers like Metro and The New York Times to amateur authors, bloggers, songwriters or anyone who works with words, photos, audio or video (which is a lot of us) can create a great-looking publication with just a few clicks of a mouse - thanks to e-publishing portals like YUDU, Scribd or Issuu. For a small upgrade, you can even sell your publications and sell as many copies as you like with no harm to the environment and no limits on where you can export to...

I think the e-publishing revolution offers something for everyone, and is increasingly going to be the way great content is offered in future. I can't wait to see what other options evolve: it's going to be a brave new reading world... and a great one.

[Diane Shipley is a freelance journalist and a marketing consultant for YUDU.com.]

In fact, coverage of e-readers in the UK has ranged from the disgusted to the disinterested.

Which is really sad, because I think this new technology is a revelation. In fact, even though Sony never sent me that promised e-reader for review (mumble, grumble) and despite the device's £199 price tag, I'm over-the-moon with excitement over the whole idea, just as I was when Amazon launched their market leading e-reading device The Kindle in the US a year ago.

You see, e-readers offer many more advantages than reading a publication on say, a laptop. They are easier on the eyes so readers can experience something akin to reading a book, without the environmental impact of the physical publishing process.

Plus, unlike a laptop, an e-reader approximates the feel of a book, so it's light and portable and you can curl up in a corner with a cup of tea with it just like your favourite paperback. But (perhaps the biggest selling point for me) you're not only curling up with one book: you can carry hundreds of books around with you on an e-reader, without any added weight. Think of the potential for school and university students, who will no longer have to strain their shoulders by heaving around bags full of books.

This is revolutionary! It's genius! And we should all be hugely excited about it! And yet we're not.

Some critics worry that electronic books signal the end of reading, but that's an argument I have little respect for. Not only will paper books no doubt exist for a long time to come but e-readers only change the way books are delivered, they do not alter their content or the joy and information reading can give us. 

A more serious concern is that authors might lose out, as most current contracts don't give writers any extra cash for e-book sales: this has to change, and authors have to be pro-active and interested in standing up for their rights. This doesn't mean campaigning against e-readers but ensuring that future contracts take the potential of electronic sales seriously. Awareness of new technology is the only way for authors to stay on top of things.

But perhaps the biggest barrier to the success of e-reading devices is their cost. Even though the Sony Reader is half the price of the Iliad, it still costs almost £200 at a time when the global economy couldn't be described as booming. Maybe devices are going to have to start off as heavily-subsidised loss leaders if they are to really succeed in today's marketplace.

But what convinces me that my enthusiasm for e-reading is not misplaced is the story of the iPod. Five years ago, we were all sceptical about the idea of swapping an entire CD collection for one tiny gadget, but now MP3 players are commonplace. IPods began as luxury items that only a few people could afford, but quickly progressed to become more affordable and to offer better functionality. There's no reason to suppose that e-readers won't do the same.

There are even rumours that Amazon might launch the Kindle in the UK next year. The Kindle is even more exciting that the Sony Reader, as it offers the ability to wirelessly download a book from Amazon's website in seconds, as well as the chance to download popular blogs and news websites. If the device is introduced here, Sony and iRex will have no choice but to fight back with even more impressive specs and who knows what we'll be able to do with our e-readers in future.

If you love reading and that doesn't sound even a little bit exciting to you, you might want to check for a pulse.


[Diane Shipley is a freelance journalist whose specialist subjects include books and technology.]