Cover Story: Susan Isaacs: The Insider Interview

And starting on network [TV], like with Hill Street Blues, but really flourishing on cable, you had narrative that came very close to the novel. If you look at The Sopranos and The Wire and Battlestar Gallactica … they're very much like novels and they offer the same pleasures in terms of subplots and interesting characters and incident … So week after week you had these wonderful stories with highly developed characters that were far more accessible to the average smart person—or the average not so smart person.

What about the ebook reading experience?

● The reading experience is not so different across platforms. It's different in convenience in ebook in terms of being able to change the font … It's also nice to be able to define a word. And when you're reading a complicated book—[Hilary Mantel's] Wolf Hall is complicated in the way Russian fiction is in that the characters have many names—you can search for a name.

What it lacks is the physical appeal of a paper book, the smell of the paper, the feel of it. In a way it's boring because even though you do have the picture of the jacket, you're always picking up the same 'book,' and that's a loss. Given those differences, there's the pleasure of being able to go out and buy a book instantly.

But it's very tough and what's particularly sad about the ebook tome is that the people who made the book business—the booksellers—not the ones who just stand behind a register and scan a barcode but people who know about books and will call you and say, 'A book came in and I think you're going to love this," or 'Did you know that besides Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies Hilary Mantel wrote some memoirs?'