Where are you doing your Christmas shopping? If you’re like most people today, your answer will be either ‘Online’ or ‘Partly online’. Internet shopping has revolutionised the way we buy our Christmas gifts. Why fight through the crowds and stagger around for several hours weighed down with bulky and heavy bags when you can achieve the same result by sitting on the sofa with the laptop and clicking the mouse a few times? Plus, there’s the compelling argument that goods bought online may be cheaper than those bought in store – unless you’re talking about the huge giants of commerce, like Wal-Mart and Tesco.

But the sad result of the mass exodus of shoppers to the digital store instead of the physical one, and the rise of big chains in each town, is the decline of independent businesses. Take a walk around your local town centre. How are independent businesses faring? Is your community thriving, your local centre of commerce humming? Or are those who are brave enough to run a shop of their own in this difficult economy facing a challenging holiday season?

I love to shop for presents in my local town in the weeks leading up to Christmas. There’s an independent sweet shop, for example, from which I buy vintage delights from mint humbugs to lemon sherbets as stocking fillers for my family. I find I enjoy local shopping, and I feel like I’ve done something good by making the effort to do some shopping in person.

But independent businesses exist online as well, of course, and I also shop online. There are some wonderful gift retailers selling unique and innovative products. As an example, I like The Literary Gift Company which sells a wide range of gifts for book lovers. For such a company to survive in a marketplace dominated by the likes of Amazon, it needs support from gift buyers.

The online/offline and giants/independents issue relating to how we shop relates closely to the dominant debates in publishing – those of publishing giants versus independents, and ebooks versus print. The news announced in October that Random House and Penguin Publishers will merge stirred the hornets’ nest, with those in the industry wondering about the plight of the smaller press in the face of major publishers joining forces in such a way. And yet smaller, independent publishers are creative and courageous  and publish some wonderful books. Of course, it is a smaller independent that published my debut novel, and I owe them much for believing in me and my writing. And then you have the ebook issue, made all the more contentious by the growing profits enjoyed by Amazon, and the traditionalists tell us that we book lovers should unite and reject the digital book.

So where does that leave us? Shopping on foot, buying print books published by independent publishers from independent book stores? Yes, sometimes one would hope. But as with all things in life, balance is key. The world is galloping forward, and to reject the advances brought by technology and the Web is naïve. So a little of each, I think, allows all branches to survive. A download on Kindle, a print book bought in Barnes & Noble, a gem unearthed in a second-hand book store, a rare book ordered online via Amazon: there is a place for each. Share the love, as they say.