At the beginning of the week it looked like the London Book Fair would be the story of the week. But by mid-week a tsunami had swept through the book world and there was only one story dominating the headlines. Read more
Some weeks there's just too much news for us to cover in a short column and this is one of those weeks, so for now the latest moves in the ongoing Google Settlement saga (see News Review 27 April 2009 and 16 November 2009) have to take precedence. Read more
Åsne Seierstad, the author of The Bookseller of Kabul, has been ordered to pay more than £26,000 in punitive damages. As Conor Foley in the Guardian put it, this news will be greeted 'as either a blow to artistic freedom of expression or a victory for the world's misrepresented and powerless poor. Read more
The estate of Adrian Jacobs, author of Willy the Wizard, has now widened its claim against Bloomsbury for plagiarism in the Harry Potter books to include J K Rowling herself, previously thought to be protected by a statute of limitations. Read more
You may be thoroughly bored with the Google Settlement (see last week's News Review) but it has a significant impact on authors' rights so it's worth making the effort to understand what it's all about. Read more
The New Google Settlement (see News Review 7 September) looks like a reasonable resolution of a thorny set of problems. Bowing to pressure from foreign governments and the US Department of Justice, the revised Settlement presented to the district Court in New York shortly before midnight on Friday limits the scope of the scheme to works registered with Read more
Stieg Larsson has been continually in the news ever since publication of his first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The third part of the Milennium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, has recently been published in the UK and the US. Read more
After a slow start, objectors have finally been getting their arguments against Google's plans in before the closing date of last Friday, 4 September. Read more
J D Salinger is suing the pseudonymous author who is planning shortly to publish a sequel Salinger's famous novel Catcher in the Rye presents what looks like a strong case of invasion of copyright. Read more
Google's recent class action settlement in the US will award sweeping rights to manage and sell digitised versions of every work published or made available in the US. The settlement allows Google - which has already digitised more than seven million books - the non-exclusive right to digitise every book published before 5th January this year. Read more
‘It's a big part of the job. Being able to put yourself in their shoes is really important. I'm not a writer, but I watch a lot of author content online and I read a lot of stuff from authors. Having that perspective is really important for me to be able to give my authors context. Their emotions are important. If they're disappointed we didn't sell, so am I.
Something interesting has been going on in publishing this year. Not the thumping increases in overall revenue - up 5 per cent to £6.7 billion across digital and physical books in the UK and Ireland. And not the surge in export markets: despite Brexit, exports are up 8 per cent to English language domains. Read more
People from many different industries have watched the rapid erosion of Twitter. While it remains up and running as of this date, millions of people have abandoned or shut down their accounts for reasons ranging from owner Elon Musk's reinstatement of former president Donald Trump's account to overall disenchantment with the role social media plays in our lives.
"Everyone always asks, so here you go," Aaliyah Aroha wrote in the caption of what would go on to become one of her most popular TikTok videos. She appears, lip-syncing to a song from the app-favorite Unofficial Bridgerton Musical and holding a stack of books, as the words "Enemies to Lovers book recommendations" float overhead. Read more
It was a dreary day in October, and the baby that was supposed to have arrived was already late. Maybe that means nothing to you, but to me, it meant that my out-of-office had long ago gone up and instead of holding my new baby, I was Googling the rates of stillbirth for post-term infants and the mortality rate of the women who carried them. Read more
At 91, Robert Gottlieb is perhaps the most acclaimed book editor of his time. He started out in 1955 and has been working in publishing ever since - serving as editor-in-chief at Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf and The New Yorker. The list of authors he's edited include Joseph Heller, Toni Morrison, John le Carré, Katharine Graham, Bill Clinton, Nora Ephron and Michael Crichton.
Author and screenwriter Fay Weldon has died "peacefully" at the age of 91, her agent Georgina Capel has confirmed.
The writer was best known for her novels exploring society and class. She penned more than 30, including The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (Sceptre) and Praxis (Coronet), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Happy New Year, book lovers! For me, January 1st came and went like a flash, and my TBR pile hasn't budged one iota since the start of 2022. Not ONE. SINGLE. MILLIMETER. In fact, it's grown even taller. And the pileup on my e-reader? At this stage it's reached monumental proportions-a traffic jam of delectable books just waiting to be unleashed.
When I look back at who I was just a few years ago and who I am today, it always gives me a jolt. A lot changes throughout our lives, but more often those changes happen slowly and in parts. We move house or change jobs; we meet people, we lose people. 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.'