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News stories from the book world in September 2004

September 2004

Booker fever

27 September 2004

The astonishing fact that this year's favourite for the Booker, David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas (Sceptre) has the hottest bookmaker odds ever (5 to 4) highlights the way in which the Man Booker Prize now commands attention outside the book world. This year's shortlist includes at least two novelists who are better-known than Mitchelll, Alan Hollinghurst and Colm Toibin, so the   Read more

What's the point of World Book Day?

20 September 2004

World Book Day 2004 was a British book promotion with global ambitions, which perhaps this year, for the first time, started to be realised. The PR agency Colman Getty generated £1.8m ($3.2) worth of press coverage.  Read more

UK outsells Germany/US titles surge ahead

13 September 2004

A recent survey on European publishing compiled for the European Commission's DG Enterprise division by a team led by Rightscom has shown that UK publishing turnover has overtaken that of Germany. This is surprising since Germany has a considerably larger population and has always been a very active book market.  Read more

Germans reject 'new spelling'

6 September 2004

As if Germany does not have enough major problems at the moment, there are growing signs of an unbeatable wave of popular opposition to the spelling reforms which have been introduced by the federal government and were supposed to become universal by August 2005.  Read more