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News stories from the book world in August 2010

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August 2010

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Catering for people who read

30 August 2010

Last week saw a flurry of articles about libraries in the UK press, starting with Culture Minister Ed Vaizey's views on libraries and the future, which included proposals to cut costs by giving libraries to communities to run and to run them from pubs and shops. Public libraries have long been at risk, but in the current economic climate they seem absolutely endangered.  Read more

Seierstad to pay punitive damages

23 August 2010

Åsne Seierstad, the author of The Bookseller of Kabul, has been ordered to pay more than £26,000 in punitive damages. As Conor Foley in the Guardian put it, this news will be greeted 'as either a blow to artistic freedom of expression or a victory for the world's misrepresented and powerless poor.  Read more

Just one big bestselling author

9 August 2010

The British independent publisher Quercus has just announced stellar results: revenue has almost tripled to £15m ($24m) for the first six months of the year, making a profit of £3.4m ($5.41m) compared with a loss of £100,000 ($159,120) in the same period in 2009.Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, which last month accounted for £1.57m ($2.49m) of sales, takes a large part of the credi  Read more

A tipping-point for e-books?

2 August 2010

It will surprise no-one who read the STOP PRESS at the end of last week's News Review to know that Andre Wylie's Odyssey Editions and what's happening to e-books have dominated the publishing news agenda this week.  Read more