Amazon's latest figures are astounding and cement its dominance of the book business, particularly self-publishing, as well as the huge inroads it is making in many other areas. Read more
World Poetry Day has been marked by the publication of some encouraging sales figures from the UK, showing sales up 16% on last year in the first quarter. But a lot of these sales seem to be driven by social media and to feature poets who are appealing to a young female audience. Read more
Online communities are the way things are going. Publishers have been trying to establish communities of readers to sell books to for some time, but now an author blogger has called for them to set up communities of writers too, and perhaps even communities of publishers and freelances as well. Read more
It's alarming to read in Publishers' Weekly that unit sales of print fiction backlist titles in the US fell 30% in the period ended 22 July compared to the same period last year, whilst non-fiction was 13% down. American publishers have suffered badly from the demise of Borders and this hasn't been offset by a switch to online backlist sales, as you might have expected. Read more
The New Year has started with a mass of news from the ebook front, where things are really moving very fast. In the States ebook sales surged after Christmas. In the UK the figures show that more than one million ereaders and more than half a million tablet devices were received as gifts over Christmas, with Amazon and Apple the leading suppliers of e-readers and tablets respectively. Read more
So, given publishers' latest focus, are readers are switching to e-books at a staggering speed and is the whole market for books set to change radically within a short space of time? The evidence for this is actually a bit contradictory. Read more
Mike Shatzkin is well-known in the publishing business on both sides of the pond for his visionary and often uncomfortable views of the future. Read more
This year's Book Marketing Limited study Books and Consumers in 2008 showed some worrying trends in book purchasing in the UK, whilst demonstrating that books have fared comparatively well compared to music and DVDs. Volume purchases of both of the latter grew much faster than books, but both of them suffered from a huge drop in price - averages of 23% for DVDs and 34% for music.< Read more
The Internet is profoundly affecting what is happening in the staid old world of books. Two bestselling authors have waded in recently, as web threats and opportunities change the way books are written, published and sold. Read more
Amazon has dominated the headlines in the book trade press over the last few months, as it has taken a more aggressive approach to its plans for growth. Back in 1997 Jeff Bezos said he wanted the internet retailer to be one of only 'two or three leading players' Actually it's done much better than that. Read more
‘Gone are the days when authors could afford to be reclusive, knowing that their publishers would be active on their behalf. Nowadays, authors are routinely expected to be performers, salespeople and marketers all at the same time.
Her touching verses about heartbreak, fat-shaming and body hair have made her Britain's most-followed poet on social media - and now she's heading for TV
IN 1978, BILL GROSE, editor-in-chief at Dell, decided to make a star of a young author from San Francisco. Grose was a thumper of novelizations from popular film and television, a fan of media tie-ins, a man with his finger in the air to feel the direction of the wind. Read more
Author Anthony Horowitz has said it's wrong "writers are running scared" due to a fear of offending, elaborating on comments he made earlier this year at Hay Festival.
As a writing coach, most of my clients come to me after months, years or even decades of trying to write a book on their own and floundering. Read more
I doubt you need to be told you should be reading more. There's a good chance you struggle to make time for reading, and it feels like just another obligation, like hitting your daily step goal, or drinking more water. Read more
Crime fiction is as popular with writers as it is readers. Fans of the genre often try their hand at writing the gripping noir and twisting tales they love. But writing crime fiction comes with its own unique challenges as crime readers demand tight plots, dark settings and gripping mysteries like no other.
If you open up any one of hundreds of news stories of rightwing "parents' rights" groups trying to have book removed from schools for having queer characters or mentioning the existence of sex, you might notice a common refrain: "We aren't banning books. Read more
American horror novelist Stephen King is taking on a new monster: corporate consolidation.
The author was the star witness in an anti-trust trial to block the two biggest US publishers' $2.2bn merger.
The US Department of Justice called on King to testify about how the proposed tie-up of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster could affect authors.