Bob's Journal

An independent bookshop that failed to sell a single book on a rainy day this week has been inundated with customers after publishing pictures of its empty aisles on social media.

The Petersfield Bookshop in Hampshire sent a melancholy tweet revealing that it had not welcomed one paying customer, probably for the first time in its 100-year history.

Smashwords' Mark Coker is sounding the alarm about indie publishers (those who write and publish their own works-let's get the terminology right-it's INDIE publishers, not the deprecating "self-published") relying too much on Amazon.

I agree with Coker.

"Since I was 19 I've been living in England and thinking I'd go home, but there was a point, around six years go, when I realised I'm here now: I'm black British." So says Roger Robinson, who this week won the TS Eliot prize for A Portable Paradise, a poetry collection born of this realisation.  Read more

The Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø, 59, has sold more than 33m books worldwide and won a host of prizes, including the prestigious Glass Key for best Nordic crime novel. Nesbø took a circuitous route to becoming a bestselling author, playing football for Norway's premier league team Molde before torn knee ligaments ended his career.  Read more

If you want to purchase a copy of The Institute, Stephen King's latest novel about supernatural kids, you could find it at your local bookstore or order it on Amazon. You could also head to your local library, where the world's books are available for the low, low price of free.  Read more