Personally I prefer the "pay what you want but give us a clue" model. Or as we used to call it, "price"!

Only yesterday, I did almost exactly the same thing with those same two Neil Gaiman books. Having decided to make him my summer holiday author last year, I'd bought half a dozen of his big fat paperbacks, and had a great summer read. I was about to pass the paperbacks on to Oxfam recently, when a colleague remarked that he'd liked The Graveyard Book, so I took the paperbacks into work yesterday. While giving him a short description of each, I suddenly realised that I'd started reading Smoke And Mirrors last year, but immediately switched to Fragile Things, and not gone back. So like you, I suddenly have a whole new Gaiman to read. W00t! And also, of course, while I'm on the subject: Squeee!

Wil, your mighty pen and keyboard have changed many Wesley haters to Wil fans. And Wil collectors! Your episode reviews have also made it easier for us to go back to certain TNG episodes, whether on rerun or on DVD, by giving us another reason to love them, or the perspective to factor out the bad screenwriting etc. which were the bads of others. Even helped us to appreciate and enjoy e.g. Patrick's and Jonathan's work a little more, for exactly the same reason! However. I can't help thinking today, that all the pain you have suffered at the nibs of these ignorant critics, might have helped to make you such a good writer. Don't you ever pause just before serving the burrito, thinking "I'll show them", and then unwrap it, reorganise the filling and add another generous bead of salsa, guacamole, cheese and cream? No? OK, I'm outa here, sorry, bye bye.

(From Scotland) Just watched your new President's speech and we were both overwhelmed. Cracked open a bottle of JD to celebrate & toast this great man and event. Not a dry eye in the house. Good luck rebuilding America. - Linda & John. xx

Hey Wil, we're in LA this weekend, but you don't seem to be here, wtf?

Is Tod Emko a real person, or just "OK me dot" backwards, kind of a Dennis-Pennis-type self-put-down?

The record companies have depended for years on selling you product, before you've had the chance to hear it through properly, maybe a couple of times, to judge whether you want it in your collection. That's why most of your CDs have only been played *once* since you bought them! And if you’re my age, the same was true of your extensive vinyl collection too: it was always mostly turkeys. But now you can download just about anything, check it out properly, and (here's the important bit, we do still need to support those artists we enjoy) buy if you like, else bin. This procedure is becoming more and more legal. Recently I downloaded American guitarist John Wesley's entire studio discography (admittedly only in MP3 format) for free, *from his own MySpace site*! I guess Hollywood has been doing something similar, how many times have you paid for a movie after a good trailer, only to discover that the trailer was the movie? Today, the word that it’s dross soon gets around. (Actually I’ve stopped buying DVDs until those unskippable piracy ads go away, but that’s another issue...)