The announcement of the winner of the Man Booker International Prize this week highlights again the growing importance of literary prizes in the international book world. Read more
It's a measure of the growing interest in short stories, amongst both writers and readers, that Costa launched its short story prize in 2012 and that the public is currently invited to read and listen to the shortlisted stories selected from over 1,000 entries on the Costa Book Awards website, and to take part in the public vote. Read more
This year's Booker result raises so many interesting issues that a longer report on Frankfurt, the Book Fair and other issues relating to international publishing will come next week. The links this week give a clue to the many themes that Paul Beatty's win with The Sellout has raised. Read more
Sometimes an author seems to step new-minted into bestsellerdom and, even rarer, literary acclaim. Lisa McInerney is such a writer and her winning of the Bailey Prize earlier in the month, followed by the Desmond Elliott Prize this week, marks a remarkable debut. Read more
Nick Clee asks in this week's Bookbrunch if you need to transcend a prize to win it, inspired by the Costa win by Frances Hardinge's children's book. Read more
This week's story was to have been on the rise in support for short stories, until, that is, Marlon James had his stunning Man Booker Prize win last night. Read more
The longlist for this year's Man Booker Prize is both diverse and international, with a wide range of different kinds of writers and a number of debuts. The longlist features three British writers, five US writers and one each from the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, India, Nigeria and Jamaica. Read more
When John Spurling won the £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction recently with The Ten Thousand Things it was much more than a good win against a formidable shortlist, which included Martin Amis, Helen Dunmore, Adam Foulds and Kamila Shamsie. Read more
The growth of literary prizes of one kind and another seems unending, although it's a pity from the point of view of unpublished writers that so many of them are restricted to books which have come from traditional publishers. Read more
Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing is having an extraordinary impact. Now that it's won the new Bailey Women's Prize (successor to last year's Women's Fiction Prize and the Orange Prize), there seems to be no stopping the author. Read more
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‘Even if you are writing stark realism, I think there is magic in this age group, because they are at an age at which possibility is at its most colossal. They are still on the brink of becoming the person that they will be, and there is magic inherent there. I wanted to say to children, "I think you have been underestimated.
"What's going on with the book market?" an agent asked me this week. The big books are not showing up, the débuts are passing by too fleetingly, while genre titles, the brands, and backlist books are shifting to the centre ground and taking root. In short, for this year's trends, look to last year's hits. Rinse and repeat.
In my previous blog, I outlined five ways in which publishing can, and likely will, use AI to streamline and make its operations more efficient. I'd like to turn your attention to how AI can help sell more books.
Labour achieved a landslide win in yesterday's general election, with Sir Keir Starmer due to enter Number 10 Downing Street for his first term in office.
A new survey commissioned by the Publishers Association (PA) has shown that children's reading for pleasure remains a priority for adults across the country, despite a decline in reading.