The publishing industry is coming under assault from all sides. Are Kindles, iPads and smartphones signalling the end of traditional paper publishing? Customers no longer believe publishers can justify the prices they charge, not just for books, newspapers, magazines and periodicals are also suffering. How will the publishing industry re-shape itself for 2050?

Will Apple and Google become the new big publishing houses? And if ubiquitous digital delivery means anyone can be a publisher, will we even need the big guns anymore?

• Chair: Tom Hunter is Award Administrator for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction Literature.
• Paul Graham-Raven is a freelance writer, editor and webgeek, genre fiction reviewer and editor-in-chief of the near-future science fiction webzine Futurismic.
• Paul Rainey is a cartoonist, illustrator and creator of diary-comic-strip-in-list-form Book of Lists. He is currently serialising his graphic novel, or ‘thick comic book’, There’s No Time Like The Present.
• Gary Gibson is from Glasgow. Nova War is his fourth novel and his second Dakota Merrick book, following 2007’s Stealing Light. The third in the series, Empire of Light, is to be published in July.
• Dave Bradley is Editor-in-Chief of SFX magazine, Europe’s best-selling sci-fi and fantasy title and a fan of all forms of science fiction and fantasy.