The Guardian has of late taken a peculiarly hostile approach to book publishers. Two recent blogs (here and here) have asked the question whether the professions of writing and publishing can survive the transition to digital, an argument which seems to emulate the views of the author Graham Swift, who told Radio 4 that he too feared for the future of professional writing as the industry shifts to digital.

At times it seems that every journalist or news editor want to break the news that the "book is dead", rather than reporting on the slightly more complicated reality that the book is evolving. That reading is in rude health, but the supply chain from author to reader is being disrupted by, as you'd expect, the growth in a new medium.

In his book Start It Up maverick investor Luke Johnson argues that these views reflect the world of journalists themselves who are becoming increasingly gloomy as a result of their own trade being threatened by the internet.

There is clearly some truth in that, but as Joe Esposito writes in his blog published on The Scholary Kitchen website, the doom-mongers have always been with us. "Eschatology is the defining meme of this industry wherever it is practiced. Gloom and doom, gloom and doom: it is the prevailing narrative, and it has been at least since I got into this business 30 years ago." He is right - the death of the mid-list, the decline in author advances, the demise of independent bookshops are stories that keep on giving. But they rarely tell the full truth about an industry that ironically cannot be painted in black and white.

Of course the odd thing is that not all predictions are wrong all the time and neither are the results of those that prove to be true necessarily bad for the wider business. Swift bemoans the death of the professional writer, but at the same time digital provides writers with more opportunities than ever to have their work seen and even bought; Amazon might operate with a commercial strong-arm but it delivers many more books in different formats to many more readers than probably any other bookseller ever. That's not a bad thing to have in your corner. In fact this Guardian piece (published today as a riposte to those earlier blogs) shows how the evidence used to paint a negative picture can be reassembled to portray a more positive one.

An article written in 1968 talking about the death of the printed word as a result of the use of computers in book production (forwarded to me by digital Dan Franklin from Random House) makes the point even better. Though the argument is ostensibly about how we must and do cherish the printed word ("the preserver of our sanity"), it concludes that the book itself might well die but that its "image" will live on.

It seems to me that everything we do now - from the app to the agency model - is somehow about preserving that image of what a book was and what it might become in the future without losing the essential qualities that made it a book in the first place (good writing, smart editing, strong presentation, determined advocacy). This is important, let's stop talking about the death of the book, and start talking about the life of the book - it's got an incredible future and I'd like to read about it.

It is with this sense of optimism that we are launching today a call for papers for the FutureBook 2011 digital conference (to those who didn't attend we had more than 400 delegates packed into a conference venue talking about the positive evolution of this industry). As my colleague Sam Missingham puts it this year we'll be taking a step further: "The conference will be an opportunity to think beyond the confines, demands and issues specific to publishing and gain insight from wider digital trends." Full details on how you can submit your ideas are on the blog.

The book is not dead: but long live the book!

PS. I hadn't seen George Monbiot's piece on the academic publishing sector when I wrote this.