A recent article by British publisher Colin Robinson in The Nation has raised many issues about Amazon. Almost always in the news, the company has also just made an announcement about its e-book sales outpacing hardback sales. Read more
The excitement surrounding the arrival of the i-Pad in countries outside the US has caught the attention of the media, reinforcing the idea that a mass audience is waiting to buy one and start using it to read e-books. The arrival of the Kindle aroused similar expectations and many articles presaging the end of the printed book. Read more
'It feels great to have the iPad launched into the world - it's going to be a game changer', said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. 'iPad users, on average, downloaded more than three apps and close to one book within hours of unpacking their new iPad'. Read more
This has been one of those weeks when there’s been so much happening that it’s difficult to cover it in a single column. Apple has broken the news of its iPad and, amidst the focus on that, Amazon has already started to fight back. This could be a turning-point and how publishing, books and authors come out of all this is hard to predict. Read more
'Technology is shifting more power to the hands of authors, who now have more options for what they can do with their manuscripts. Everything from the choice of publishing channels, to content formats, but also increasing the quality of their content using tools which perhaps would have been cost prohibitive to them in the past. Authors also want to reach as large an audience as possible.
When bookstores across the United States closed last spring, Tyrrell Mahoney, the president of Chronicle Books, braced for disaster as she watched revenue plummet. Then, months into the crisis, Chronicle found an unlikely savior: the rapper Snoop Dogg and his two-year-old cookbook. Read more
Another shoe falls today (April 15), as London Book Fair announces that it will, after all, resort to an all-digital 2021 evocation, giving up on what organizers had hoped could be a physical staging at Olympia London. The dates, having been moved from March to the early summer, are retained this year as June 29 to July 1, but earlier additional dates are being added. Read more
The Bologna Children's Book FairThe Bologna Children's Book Fair or La fiera del libro per ragazzi is the leading professional fair for children's books in the world. has cancelled this year's physical events and will go digital-only owing to the coronavirus pandemic.
On Thursday, James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble, gave the keynote address at the Independent Book Publishers Association's annual IBPA Publishing University, where he was in conversation with Karla Olson, publisher of Patagonia Books and IBPA chair. Read more
I was talking, as one does, to the Reader on the Clapham Omnibus. I told him I was about to have a new book out after a 10-year gap. He was pleased to hear it, and he asked: "So, what made you decide to start writing again?"
"I didn't."
He looked a little confused.
I told him: "I never stopped."
His brow cleared. "Ah, it's one of these thousand-page doorstoppers?" Read more
In November 1971, a debut novel from a young author was published, to a small but not insignificant splash. Set in a world of tiny people who live in a carpet, it was described by the book trade journal Smith's Trade News as "one of the most original tots' tomes to hit the bookshops for many a decade", while Teachers' News called it a story of "quite extraordinary quality".
Growing up in 1980s Glasgow amid a working class beaten down by Thatcherism, Shuggie Bain watches as his family becomes increasingly broke and broken; his mother Agnes' alcoholism drags her into a pit of despair, no matter how hard poor Shuggie loves her. Oh, and Shuggie is clearly gay - even if he doesn't understand that at first - and is badly and endlessly bullied for it.
In 1972, Avon Books published "The Flame and the Flower," by Kathleen Woodiwiss - a hefty historical romance that traded chastity for steamy sex scenes. It arrived in the thick of the sexual revolution, and readers loved it: It was an instant bestseller that's credited with birthing the modern romance genre. Read more
Our resident online creative writing tutor Eliza Robertson shares five top tips for writing a short story and techniques for developing your writing skills.
All of the UK's children's laureates, including Cressida Cowell, Quentin Blake, Malorie Blackman and Michael Rosen, are uniting to call for the government to dedicate £100m a year to revitalising "deteriorating" primary school libraries across the country, amid fears that literacy levels have dropped severely during the pandemic. Read more
As someone who has published (twice) with a hybrid press, I've become aware that there's a lot of confusion about what the term means and how hybrid publishing really works.
'Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.'