Neil Gaiman urges prominent figures of the book industry to start trying new things, even if it means making mistakes, to cater to the changing "digital frontier"

During a provocative speech at this week's London Book Fair, Neil Gaiman urged prominent figures of the book industry to start trying new things, even if it means making mistakes, to cater to the changing "digital frontier."

"Anyone who tells you they know what's coming, what things will be like in 10 years' time, is simply lying to you," he said. "Try everything. Make mistakes. Surprise ourselves. Try anything else. Fail. Fail better. And succeed in ways we never would have imagined a year or a week ago."

Gaiman, the award-winning author of the Sandman comics, American Gods and the children's novel "The Graveyard Book", was the keynote speaker at the book fair's fifth Digital Minds Conference, where international publishing world leaders gathered to debate "the future of publishing". But with 1.8m Twitter followers to his name, and as one of the first author bloggers, Gaiman told delegates that his "only real prediction is that is it's all changing".

Going against a column yesterday in which Booksellers Association chief executive Tim Godfray argued that Amazon was the "foe", and has "the ability to destroy the book trade as we know it", Gaiman believes that "Amazon, Google and all of those things probably aren't the enemy. The enemy right now is simply refusing to understand that the world is changing"