E-books are for porn but real books will survive, says award-winning author Telegraph article on Joan Brady.
Links of the week June 25 2012 (26)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
2 July 2012
E-books are for porn but real books will survive, says award-winning author E-books are "worthless" and have become the preserve of soap stars%u2019 biographies and soft porn, while physical books will survive because people use them as status symbols, a Whitbread Prize-winning author has said.
25 June 2012
Indies continue to decline on high street UK Booksellers' Associaton President Tim Godfray expresses concern about the decline in independent booksshops.
Booksellers Association chief executive Tim Godfray has renewed calls for publishers to "seriously consider" their business models to support independent bookshops as their numbers continued to decline in 2011. Casualties included Dartmouth's Harbour bookshop, opened by A A Milne's son, which closed after 60 years, Bookthrift in Southwold, Derwent Bookshop in Workington, Cumbria, and Pritchard's Bookshop in Formby, near Liverpool.
Going to the Very Edge of the Known Writing Universe Roger Tagholm in Publishng Perspectives on the London Writing in a Digital Age conference.
LONDON: A new conference organized by the UK's The Literary Consultancy (TLC) received a ringing endorsement from bestselling novelist Kate Mosse on its opening day in London earlier this month - even though Mosse herself tries to keep many of the developments it talked about at arm's length. Writing in a Digital Age, which was held over two-days at the city's Free Word centre, was unusual in that it focused on authors, and in particular would-be authors, rather than the industry itself. As Jon Slack, co-curator with the TLC's Rebecca Swift, put it: "There are many events that showcase innovation and foster critical discussion among publishers, but their audience has been the book trade. Authors have been missing from the conversation and we wanted to address that."
Why the Waterstones/Amazon Deal is "Like Vichy France" more from the same source - UK publishers and booksellers comment on the Waterstones deal with Amazon.
Last month, Waterstones' MD James Daunt shocked the world by penning a deal with Amazon to partner with them to supply e-books to the booksellers customers. But he has not done the surprise Kindle deal through gritted teeth, as some have suggested - he's done it "through having all his teeth taken out." That's the view of one senior British publisher as the UK industry continues to digest the scant detail on the best kept secret since Bertelsmann bought Random House UKClick for Random House UK Publishers References listing in 1998.
What Can Trade Publishers Learn from Fanfiction? Fanfiction offers an alternative publishing model for community engagement, online interaction and the book business. Is it an alternative publishing model?
Fanfiction has current notoriety in the publishing world because of the almost outrageous success of the Fifty Shades series. The first book was allegedly based largely on erotic Twilight fanfiction that the author had written. I'm not going to discuss the merits or otherwise of the book itself, but it raises the point (so to speak) of issues that are becoming ever more pertinent in the digital world, and boundaries that once seemed clearly defined are becoming increasingly blurred.