Serious non-fiction, many will tell you, is in serious trouble. Lists are being cut, advances to authors are dropping and the impressive sales figures once achieved by distinguished writers are rarely seen. The halcyon era of the learned tome is undoubtedly behind us, especially with inflated hardback prices doing no favours to their traditional markets.

But while sales figures for major titles may be in decline, range sales are looking pretty healthy, at least amongst those retailers responding adequately to customer demand.

In an age of increasing information overload, books remain a superior source of knowledge. Television's first principle is entertainment, coupled with an inherent fear of challenging its audience. Print journalism is becoming terminally undermined by bias and political agenda, and its limited extent frequently simplifies topics to the point of inaccuracy. And the world wide web is so lacking in quality control that it's tricky to isolate the facts from the froth and the falsehood.

Books, however, have largely retained their authority; quality non-fiction is more thorough, more deeply researched and created primarily to inform.

Knowledge has become an even more precious commodity because globalisation means that things which might once have seemed remote affect us directly. Political decisions can determine the fate of our way of life, our species and our planet as never before and commercial organisations wield terrifying influence.

Now, the reinvigorated market for popular science, for example, is driven by a desire understand increasingly relevant topics such as genetics, climatology and even the properties of the quantum world.

The business sector was previously dominated by titles aimed at professionals, but the reckless abandon of the world's financial institutions has made us all want to scrutinise their dubiously recondite activities.

History has moved on from empires and battles and kings to social reportage, offering insights into previous generations not as exhaustively documented as the present one and telling us about how our societies came to be they way are.

It seems inevitable that readers' interests will continue to broaden. I do hope this might result in the revitalisation of midlist and, with it, a new embracing of bookshops - and libraries - as invaluable resources at the heart of our communities.

Jonathan Ruppin is the Web Editor for Foyles Bookshops, a board member of the publisher And Other Stories and an editorial committee member of New Books in German. He has twelve years' bookselling experience, has worked for two literary agents and a publisher and wrote the Paperback Preview for The Bookseller for four years. He is a former Chair of the Society of Young Publishers and was a judge for the 2010 Costa Novel Award.

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