Figures quoted by China Daily show that publishers in China are benefiting from 300m users of mobile devices who read electronic books. The market is up 25% year on year and reached $1.7 billion in sales last year. Read more
Some sensational figures have just been released showing the trend towards book sales in print form as opposed to ebook is continuing, as sales of consumer ebooks in the UK dropped by a whopping 17%. These figures exclude self-published titles, which have contributed a large proportion of the ebook sales. But more than 50% of genre sales are now reckoned to be in ebook form. Read more
The successful growth of new British publisher Head of Zeus shows how an international approach to publishing can put a business in a strong position through challenging the traditional approach to publishing markets. Read more
Nielsen has just reported that ebook sales in the US declined a rather surprising 15% in 2016, as compared with 2015. There seem to have been two reasons for this. Read more
Amongst the predictions springing up as we move into the new year, a hard figure is the most astonishing. The slowing-down of ebook sales is well-documented but it is quite startling that the first figure of 2017 is that the UK print market sold 195 million books in 2016, an increase of almost 7% on 2015, and volume increased by 4.5%. Read more
Ebook sales plunged in October 2015, with adult books dropping 22% in one month, compared to children's ebooks which went down a whopping 44.7%. As we've discussed elsewhere, the children's market has a strong preference for print books, with both parents and children preferring them. Read more
Latest figures from the States suggest that readers are not parting with their print books, in spite of the growth in ebook sales, which have reached $8.5 billion in value worldwide. In the US the figures show that 23% of all male adult readers and 33% of females ones read ebooks. Read more
A new Mintel survey this week shows that ebook fans are increasing their reading because ebooks are cheaper. These UK figures show that 26% of consumers who have bought an e-book in the last year are reading more than they used to because e-books cost less than paperbacks, a figure that rises to 38% of 16 to 24-year-olds. Read more
Recent figures from Bowker in the US show a startling plunge in the number of titles printed print-on-demand by 46% year-on-year. Even more surprising perhaps is that this decline is not part of the major shift from print titles to ebooks, as the overall print figures declined by only 1.6%. 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.
'And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.'