If you want an illustration of the way things are today (TM), you can’t do better than to walk into Waterstones Piccadilly. I went in there at lunchtime looking for a book about Papal elections (this one), and I couldn’t find a copy on the shelves. This was not because they had sold out through demand.
What was on the shelves, by the hundreds and on a special half-price offer? The bloody Da Vinci Code, of course.