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Amazon's sensational growth

30 July 2018

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 and new ebook platform Bookgrail

20 March 2017

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

Scribd subscription service cuts out bestselling romance and erotica

6 July 2015

The news that Scribd is reining back on successful erotica and romance titles exposes the weak link in the subscription model of bookselling.
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A challlenge to Amazon at last?

9 March 2015

So what are the chances of the just-launched German online book retailer and e-reader, backed by bookstore chains Thalia, Weltbild and Hugendubel, Deutsche Telekom, and giant German publisher Bertelsmann providing a real challenge to Amazon?  Read more

Latest trends in UK and US book-buying

25 March 2013

Last week's annual Books and Consumers research from Bowker showed some interesting trends in book-buying both in the UK and the US. In 2012 British consumers bought 296m books, compared to 288m in 2011, but for the fifth year in a row spend declined from £2,137m ($3.226) to £2.1086 ($3.182) as the lower prices for ebooks started to affect the overall price mix.  Read more

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1 July 2019 - What's new

July 2019
  • ‘There's been a great democratisation of the world of poetry, In the past, it was seen as only certain kinds of people wrote poems, but now there isn't that same divide. There's all sorts of different forms: spoken-word poetry, Instagram poetry... Poets like Hollie McNish have taken off and are selling lots.
  Read more

The Caterpillar Story Prize 2019

Information

Closing date: 
30 September 2019
Entry: 
Open to all writers over 16 Entry fee €12
Prize: 
First Prize €1,000, Second Prize a week’s retreat at the marvellous Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Co. Monaghan, Ireland.

This annual award is given to the best story (of no more than 1,500 words) written by an adult for children aged 7-11.
Anyone can enter, as long as you are over 16 and your story is previously unpublished.


THE JUDGE

We are delighted to announce that Kelly McCaughrain will judge The Caterpillar Story Prize 2019.

HOW TO ENTER  Read more

'When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.' I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.'

— George Orwell

'Different voices'

1 July 2019

‘There's been a great democratisation of the world of poetry, In the past, it was seen as only certain kinds of people wrote poems, but now there isn't that same divide. There's all sorts of different forms: spoken-word poetry, Instagram poetry... Poets like Hollie McNish have taken off and are selling lots.  Read more

24 June 2019 - What's new

June 2019
  • The first draft - 'The toughest part of the whole process is going from the outline to the first draft. When you are writing the outline you can do anything from changing the gender of a character to reseting the whole thing in Egypt. You are all-powerful.
  Read more