At this week's conference of the Independent Publishers' Guild, Jo Forshaw talked about the way in which the audio market is opening up, beginning to provide a challenge to ebooks. Read more
A generally buoyant picture has emerged from the London Book Fair, which showed an international publishing business in relatively good shape and double-digit growth in the all-important number of pre-registered visitors to the Fair. The mood of optimism was stoked by the low pound and several new developments. 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
Some nervousness has been expressed by authors and staff in the last few days about the impending purchase by Bertelsmann of part of the Pearson share of Penguin Random House, but is there really much reason to feel anxious about this? Read more
The first major publishing news of the New Year has been the announcement that Pearson, having declared a profit warning because of change and volatility in the educational market and declining sales in higher education, is intending to offload its 47% stake in Penguin Random House - and its partner Bertelsmann is keen to acquire it. Read more
The changes digitisation has brought about in the agent's role are substantial but one of the unchanging things about getting an agent is that developments in the publishing world have made remarkably little difference to it - it's as difficult as ever, some would say more so. Read more
So, another London Book Fair has come and gone. Our links this week include some interesting stories about the Fair but the main thing seems to be that this was a lively and confident affair, with publishers from all over the world bullish and ready to do business. Read more
Independent London publishing house Atlantic has recently had a new managing director, Will Atkinson. He put forward the company's publishing philosophy very clearly in an article for Bookbrunch, which sadly is behind their paywall. It is possible however to quote what he says in his article, ‘Publishing culture and commerce': Read more
‘The way to tackle writer's block is to not believe it exists. If you run out of steam on something, switch to something else and come back later. Also, I don't get writers block because I am not writing - I am just typing, thinking, pushing into something to see what's there. I never sit down to produce a novel. I work a line or two, redraft endlessly, improvise.
Literary retellings of classics have exploded in the past few years, not least thanks to BookTok's enduring love for Madeline Miller and her feminist takes on the Greek myths. Read more
After four years of hard work with a well-known New York City literary agent, around Christmas 1999, I gave up on the traditional route and decided to publish my first novel, a Silicon Valley cyberpunk thriller called Acts of the Apostles, myself.
Ava Glass thought she had made her first work friend. An American now living in London, she had just started her first job as a civil servant, working in counter-terrorism communications. She was waiting for security clearance when, one morning, about three weeks in, she got talking to a colleague in the kitchen. The woman was in her late 20s, and also new, she said. Read more
Before I became a full-time writer, I spent a decade working as a criminal defence attorney. It was rewarding, exhausting, heart-breaking work. I'm glad not to be practising any longer, but I also feel lucky to have had the experiences I did during those years. Read more
Ken Follett's The Armor of Light is now available from Viking, so we asked him a few questions about his writing practice, his favorite books, and more.
The Authors Guild and 17 authors including George R R Martin, John Grisham and Jodie Picoult have filed a class-action suit against OpenAI for copyright infringement of their works of fiction and "on behalf of a class of fiction writers whose works have been used to train GPT". Read more
Yet another group of authors has filed class action copyright infringement lawsuits against artificial intelligence pioneers Open AI and Meta, claiming the companies' AI services used unauthorized copies of their books to train their AI models, including copies that were allegedly scraped from notorious pirate sites. Read more
A specter is haunting the landscape-the specter of generative AI. First came fears that student cheating would explode, plus that artists and actors would be unemployed. Then the ante was upped: Some of the very technology's creators warned that AI's potential risk to humanity as we know it was on par with pandemics and nuclear war.
We're living in a new age of discovery. One in which readers are more quickly and organically discovering new books and authors. And yes, I'm talking about how TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and social media in general have emerged as the premier way for readers to build/join communities, and for authors to connect with their fans. Read more
'Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.'