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Dynamic growth in China's ebook market

17 July 2017

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

BookExpo and a new Children's Laureate

5 June 2017

BookExpo and the appointment of a new UK Children's Laureate have dominated the book trade news agenda this week.  Read more

Ebook sales plummet

24 April 2017

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

British publisher provides challenge in US market

27 February 2017

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

US ebook unit sales declined 15%, but there's good news on children's publishing

30 January 2017

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

The publishing world as 2016 turns into 2017

2 January 2017

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 plunge

7 March 2016

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

Readers loyal to print

10 November 2014

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

Ebook buyers reading more books

20 October 2014

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

Print on demand plunges/Frankfurt Book Fair sets up self-publishing programme

1 September 2014

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

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'The most dangerous profession'

21 October 2019

‘I had always wanted to be a writer as a child but couldn't spell out this dream to myself because during the Cultural Revolution all writers were condemned. To be a writer was the most dangerous profession. I wrote my first poem aged 16 and destroyed it. When I was working spreading manure in the paddy fields aged 16 and 17, I was always writing in my head.  Read more

'Read, read, read everything - trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.'

— William Faulkner

14 October 2019 - What's new

October 2019
  • ‘First of all, I'm always writing from a point of view. I decide what the purpose of the scene is, and at least begin with some purpose. But, even more important, from whose point of view is this scene seen?
  Read more