Today in good news, the American Booksellers Association announced that membership is at its highest level in 20 years. Per reporting by Hillel Italie at the Associated Press:
We set up our tiny bookshop on a 1920s barge 12 years ago. Though we took turns to describe our grandiose plans for world domination in the early days, we never truly expected anything more than that we would maybe scrape enough - with the help of other work - to keep the thing open and give us days sitting on the towpath talking about books and literature with like-minded people. Read more
When the final Harry Potter installment was published on July 21, 2007, bookstores across the U.S. celebrated with midnight release parties - some with booze, befitting a series whose earliest readers were now in their 20s. These parties took place at thousands of bookstores at a time that was, in retrospect, Peak Bookstore. Read more
Last October, while Amazon opened its first four-star stores in the UK, more than 500 book and publishing industry professionals gathered for a two-day conference called "Reimagining Bookstores". Read more
'In a strange way lockdown meant I fell in love with the business all over again as I experienced what the bookshop meant to me, our staff and our customers'
After opening its first bookstore with much fanfare on November 3, 2015, this week Amazon confirmed a report from Reuters that it is closing all of its physical bookstores, as well as its 4-star and pop-up stores, which carry a mix of items, including some books. All told, Amazon will close about 68 stores, including its 24 bookstores.
When Andy Hunter was looking for US$1.2 million to create Bookshop.org, "It was actually an extremely lonely experience because I was wandering around New York City talking to big agents, like publishers, high-net-worth individuals or investors I thought might care about bookstores. Read more
Readers love bookstores. Even the most devoted library power user, audiobook aficionado, or ebook devotee enjoys wiling time away in the aisles. There's perhaps nothing more romanticized in the bookish world than a secondhand bookstore brimming with stacks of books precariously balanced on every surface. They make for great Instagram pictures - but do they make for a good business model?
'For God's sake, never use a metaphor and then explain it...
You can assume a world from so little and readers will. So I'm more interested economy than encyclopaedism, in how little you can get away with rather than how much you can cram in...
I don't want to write puzzle stories that can be decoded to the correct answer... Read more
Less than a year after an attempt on his life, author Salman Rushdie made a rare public appearance at an awards ceremony Thursday to warn of the dangers of banning books and of related movements in the US to roll back freedoms of expression.
"The information is telling me -" wrote Martin Amis in his 1995 novel The Information. "The information is telling me to stop saying hi and to start saying bye." It was an intimation of mortality typical of Amis, who died on Friday at the age of 73 - as interested in how stylishly the thought was expressed as in what it was expressing.
Accepting the coveted Caldecott medal in 1964, an annual award honouring the "most distinguished American picture book for children", the author Maurice Sendak addressed the rumbles of disapproval his winning book had received from some quarters about it being too frightening by wryly commenting, "Where the Wild Things Are was not meant to please everybody - only children."
The intellectual property rights to the novels of British-South African author Wilbur Smith are up for sale, with ACF investment bank handling the process.
Smith, who died in 2021, published over 50 novels in genres such as adventure and historical fiction. Smith's first novel When the Lion Feeds was published in 1964.
Today in good news, the American Booksellers Association announced that membership is at its highest level in 20 years. Per reporting by Hillel Italie at the Associated Press:
James Daunt keynoted the Association of American Literary Agents programme at Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/'s US Book Show in New York this week, telling home truths about Barnes & Noble, the company he has helmed since August 2019, in tandem with running Waterstones.
Do we need to care for authors better, rethink staff workloads and pay more attention to each book? Yes. But the short answer to "can we publish less, but better?" is: not necessarily.
Any bookish person who has ever passed through an airport in the United States will tend to have been struck by a contrast. Airport bookshops in the UK are piled high with thrillers, spy stories, romantic comedies and how-to books: untaxing fare for a long flight. Read more
It is not hard - at all - to trick today's chatbots into discussing taboo topics, regurgitating bigoted content and spreading misinformation. That's why AI pioneer Anthropic has imbued its generative AI, Claude, with a mix of 10 secret principles of fairness, which it unveiled in March. Read more
Almost 60% of LinkedIn's users are between the ages of 25 and 34, making it the single largest demographic to use the platform. And this is a demographic with a willingness to pay for news.
'Never use a metaphor and then explain it'
'For God's sake, never use a metaphor and then explain it...
You can assume a world from so little and readers will. So I'm more interested economy than encyclopaedism, in how little you can get away with rather than how much you can cram in...
I don't want to write puzzle stories that can be decoded to the correct answer... Read more