Old hat. Photograph: Sean Smith

One of the many great things about books is that they're endlessly reproducible - since the invention of the printing press, anyway. Even if you can't rub together the cash for your own copy, the library will (eventually) sort you out. There's really not that much difference between a 25-grand first edition of Emma and the copies available on Amazon for a penny.

Except, of course, there is the small but compelling matter of an object's aura, the strange magic that glows around a rare or unique object and adds zeroes to its asking price.

Next month, Waterstone's is hoping to work something of the same abracadabra on behalf of English PEN and Dyslexia Action. A clutch of authors - including Sebastian Faulks, Doris Lessing, JK Rowling (is it rash to think this one will fetch a few quid?) and Irvine Welsh - have been commissioned to write original, "unique" stories on postcards. These will then be auctioned off on June 10 to an invited audience.

You're not on the guest list, but you couldn't afford it, anyway. However, the complete set will be reproduced as a book of postcards available to the common people later in the summer, proceeds also to charity. And much as it will be great to see the two beneficiaries getting a big windfall, I think the postcards collection has got to be the better deal.

After all, Margaret Atwood's contribution will be written remotely, with her famous LongPen, so it's already a reproduction even while it is a unique object.