Sights like these will be less frequent in 2007. Honest. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA
It'll be a bad year for ghostwriters. That's the opinion of many agents and publishers. The demise of the celebrity autobiography has been well flagged, but the first few months of 2007 are likely to see its last gasps. Only the paperback edition of Peter Kay 's The Sound of Laughter and Russell Brand's life story are set to buck the downward trend: and they were both written by stars, not ghostwriters. It's not a good time to win Big Brother.
Instead, it looks like a great year for established writers. There's a new Ian McEwan. A new Don DeLillo. A new Graham Swift. Philip Roth's Exit Ghost - which explores the Bush/Kerry election contest - will be competing for space on the bookshelves with books by the young British novelists Nicola Barker, Dan Rhodes and Adam Thirlwell. Jonathan Coe's The Rain Before it Falls is already being tipped for big prizes.
Just how fickle is publishing, year on year? David Miller, of literary agency Rogers, Coleridge & White, claims that there are often huge changes over 12 months. Established authors set the agenda with unexpected offerings such as The Dangerous Book for Boys. The media usually has a role, creating and then destroying the likes of Jade Goody. Pundit-lynched celebrities rapidly stop selling books. But there's also a large element of luck - no one could have predicted the success of Eats, Shoots and Leaves or Amo, Amas, Amat...and All That.
For David, this is the year when quality will start to shine through - the year in which publishers will try not to follow the market, but to lead it. "I hope this is the year in which smaller publishers who have the time and energy to invest in new talent can make less mainstream books work," he says. "I hope it's also the year where publishers try to broaden the marketplace and ensure booksellers sell more of the quality books people want. Last year, one of the top critics' choices was Suite Francaise by Irène Némirovsky, but you could not find it easily in the high street chains - I went to seven shops before John Sandoe's came to the rescue."
There is an increasing demand for quality fiction. The success of Victoria Hislop's The Island proves that. Publishers and agents are optimistic that buyers are becoming more adventurous. Many are prepared to bet that translations will be the next big thing in 2007, following the success of Orion's The Shadow of the Wind. Yan Lianke's substantial yet sexy satire on modern China, The Dream of Ding Village - already banned by the communist party and a runaway success in France - is the one to watch. But will translations make those critical front-of-store slots?
You get the feeling that both publishers and booksellers have had enough of the media-driven choices of 2006 - the failure of Billie Piper's autobiography to sell more than a few thousand copies hit Borders and Waterstones almost as hard as the people who signed off the advance. Although publishers are clearly still looking for that one celebrity-penned book that will sell 500,000 copies, I think there's a real determination that 2007 will be the year when it's the authors, and not the celebrities, who set the agenda. Do you agree?
