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News stories from the book world in June 2009

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June 2009

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Prizes, prizes

29 June 2009

Not a day seems to go by without a literary prize announcement. Even so the news that this week the author Siobhan Dowd has won the Highly-regarded CILIP Carnegie Prize was unusual, for Dowd died in 2007. Her book Bog Child is set in Northern Ireland in 1981, at the height of the troubles, and is about a teenager who discovers a child's body which has lain undiscovered in t  Read more

US book-buyers are getting older

22 June 2009

Two-thirds of book-buyers in the US are 43 and older. This stark statistic was revealed in the recent Book Industry Study Group study. Book sales in the US are flat, with sales expected to stagnate for at least another year.   Read more

Brilliant new Children's Laureate appointed

15 June 2009

The announcement of the sixth UK children's Laureate this week was greeted with great enthusiasm. Making the announcement to a packed audience from the children's book world, Andrew MotionEnglish poet, novelist and biographer; Poet Laureate of United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009; during his laureateship founded the Poetry Archive, an online resource of poems and audio recordings of poets reading their own work, soon to be Sir Andrew Motion, the Chair of the Children's Laureate Panel, said: 'Anthony Browne is an absolutely distinctive and extraordinarily skilled artist - someone whose work entrances childr  Read more

Salinger sues to protect his copyright

8 June 2009

J D Salinger is suing the pseudonymous author who is planning shortly to publish a sequel Salinger's famous novel Catcher in the Rye presents what looks like a strong case of invasion of copyright.   Read more

'How many more BEAs?'

1 June 2009

This weekend the Javits Center in New York has been thronged with the thousands of people attending BookExpo, the biggest annual book show in North America. It's clear from the coverage that a mass of interesting author events and the usual promotional round are making this BookExpo seem as busy as ever, and attendance figures are only slightly down.  Read more