‘There are just too many books being published,’ I am told with a finger jab by yet another publishing friend.

By which I know them to mean undoubtedly that bricks-and-mortar bookshops only have so much space, and booksellers and publishers only so much bandwidth, before everyone loses focus and there is not enough room for the oxygen of PR and discoverability and for potential new bestsellers to break through.

And as for readers? Well, just how many books can even the most voracious bibliophile ever consume?

But what about writers and the drive to create? And the fact that online offers a limitless catalogue of titles to buy anywhere in the world 24/7? Or the infinite elasticity to accommodate backlist that Ingram has created via Lightning Source Print on Demand?

I wouldn’t tell anyone not to write a book because too many are already being made available via traditional publishers and channels, just like I wouldn’t tell someone to stop recording music in their bedroom or shooting films on their iPhone.

Traditional publishers have spent some time now building huge moats around their castles of IP investment, making it more and more difficult for agents and writers to find a way to swim across, unless they are accompanied by a network of virtually guaranteed sales.

So writers, with the help of freelance-marketplace platforms, publishing services providers, creative, PR and marketing agencies, have built their own castle. Which in some ways is more like a funfair. An increasingly accessible place to publish and play and make public your work if for no other reason than that you are passionate about it finding even one new unknown reader. Whether you will be commercially successful or not.

In a previous life, whilst inside the walls of a large conglomerate legacy publisher, we used to comment how counterintuitive, if understandable, it was telling new unagented writers on your website that you did not accept unsolicited manuscripts. That the only way to find future royalty earnings was to play the publishing lottery and hope to be one of the chosen few.

Now it is more and more acceptable to go it alone, or at least to be supported in your DIY aspirations. For a myriad of diverse objectives. And to just ‘be curious’, as Ted Lasso would say.