Almost 4m books were sold in the UK in the first six days after bookshops reopened last week - a jump of over 30% on the same week last year as desperate readers returned to browse the aisles for the first time in three months.
More than 1,300 writers including Kerry Hudson, David Nicholls, Sally Rooney, Michael Rosen and Val McDermid have backed a campaign for Waterstones booksellers to be paid the living wage.
Independent booksellers often talk about their tight bonds with their local communities, and, increasingly, one of the many ways in which they are engaging with those communities is by stocking self-published titles by local writers. Read more
The joy of the bookstore lies in what might be called the analog experience of the physical space: Hushed page-flipping; the sound of two covers sliding against each other as a book is returned to its spot on the shelf; the quiet murmur of, "Have you read this one?" Luddites and Twitter junkies alike need insulation from the glare of screens and the sounds of speakers.
In case you missed it, Amazon.com, the world's largest online bookseller, has been opening brick-and-mortar stores over the past few years, with the newest opening this week in Chicago's upscale Lakeview neighborhood.
"Bookselling was and is for me a cultural and political expression, an expression of progressive change, of challenge to oppressive authority, of a search for a community of values which can act as an underpinning of a better world. Read more
Even by the standards of the ailing book publishing industry, the past year has been a bad one for Barnes & Noble. After the company spun off its profitable college textbook division, its stock plunged nearly 40 percent. Its long-term debt tripled, to $192 million, and its cash reserves dwindled. Read more
Readings first opened in 1969, and it was a partnership of three - Ross Reading, his wife Dorothy Reading, and Peter Reid. At the time, Australia had a very small local publishing industry and most books came from overseas, as Australia was regarded as part of the British Commonwealth via UK publishers. Read more
Love conquers all ... and it's certainly causing problems for the online book subscription service Scribd, which has announced it is slashing its romance and erotica offer because readers are gorging themselves. Read more
‘My father was a playwright so I grew up with reverence for writing. The sound of his typewriter clacking was one I grew to love. What I didn't know was how disappointed he was by the failure of his work to reach the West End. Later, I realised not all writing careers end in disappointment, and it was worth trying to make mine a success...
Organizers of the United Kingdom's TS Eliot Prize had planned to hold its shortlisted poets' readings at London's Royal Festival Hall on January 10 and an awards ceremony on the 11th. Read more
Over the weekend fanfiction website Archive of our Own went down, to the dismay of fanfic readers everywhere. While it's not the result of any one fic, despite what some fans thought, it's a reflection of how much the pandemic has changed our fanfiction reading habits.
When COVID-19 hit in early 2020, the press coverage was overwhelming. The trusted book publishing media, including Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/, Publishing Perspectives, Publishers Lunch, The Bookseller in the U.K. and Quill & Quire in Canada, each did a fine job of monitoring developments within publishing and bookselling. Read more
There are a ton of book-to-movie adaptations coming our way this year, even exceeding this list. Those that do not have set dates yet we've omitted, such as YA sequels To All The Boys: Always and Forever, Lara Jean, After We Fell and crime action flick Tom Clancy's Without Remorse starring Michael B. Jordan. Here's just about every major movie you might want to crack open a book for in 2021
While I was planning my current novel and annotating that plan, I asked myself a series of questions in the annotations. I know I'm not the only one to make notes on a draft in the form of questions, but until recently I wasn't aware that I was creating problems for myself by not categorizing the questions.
Bernardine Evaristo, the Booker prize-winning novelist, is heading a major project to republish books by black British writers that generally disappeared without trace before they could receive the recognition they deserved. Read more
From Michael Hansen's perspective, the textbook industry is having a Spotify moment.
The chief executive of Cengage, a leading publisher, brought up the music streaming service on an investor call last month, in reference to a question about the future of physical textbooks. Read more
Book burning has not historically been considered an anti-fascist gesture. But in the wake of the storming of the Capitol Building in Washington DC by crazed Trump supporters, perhaps that's set to change. Read more
'Writing is a kind of revenge against circumstance too: bad luck, loss, pain. If you make something out of it, then you've no longer been bested by these events.'