Coronavirus

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.

The Covid-19 pandemic has already had a big impact on independent publishing. Some changes-working at home, employee furloughs, curbside shopping-were thrust upon the industry suddenly. And though they weren't part of a concerted effort to change old and inefficient business practices, they may indeed have that effect.  Read more

Never mind newly minted corona lockdown stories, authors are frantically rewriting existing projects to reflect a world turned upside down by the pandemic - or shelving them indefinitely

The Covid-19 pandemic has had disastrous consequences across the economy, and with the IMF predicting a 3% contraction of the economy this year, that will only get worse. While this will hit many industries hard, there is a particularly deep fear for those in the relatively privileged cultural industries.  Read more

As author Ashley Poston made her way through a to-do list in early March, she fired off an e-mail to her publicist with a list of bookstores that she wanted to read at for the release of her YA romance Bookish and the Beast (Quirk, Aug.).  Read more