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News stories from the book world in January 2011

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January 2011

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Ebooks outsell paperbacks

31 January 2011

Amazon has just announced that ebooks for its Kindle are now outselling paperbacks.  Read more

Writers and depression

24 January 2011

An interesting study published recently in the US suggests that writers are at greater risk of depression than most other occupations. The study puts artists and writers among the most vulnerable of professionals, alongside other "at risk" jobs including care workers, teachers, social workers, maintenance staff and salespeople.  Read more

Plagiarism and passing-off

17 January 2011

Bestselling author J K Rowling is in the clear as regards a case brought against her by the estate of the late Adrian Jacobs in relation to his book Willy the Wizard, which she was accused of using as the basis of the Harry Potter books. The judge said: "The contrast between the total concept and feel of the work is so stark that any serious comparison of the two strains credulity  Read more

Romance - perfect on e-reader

10 January 2011

Amazon Kindle sales in the US and UK last year were eight million, making it their biggest selling product ever. An article in the UK's Daily Mail put this down to 'spinsters' buying romance to read on their Kindles (and other e-readers) because they were too embarrassed to be seen reading romances in pubic in book form because of the covers.  Read more

Ngram wows them all

3 January 2011

A fantastic new tool has become available for anyone interested in using the power of the web to trace word use. Google's Ngram is a digital storehouse which comprises words and short phrases - 500 billion of them from 5.2 million books - contained in books published between 1500 and 2008 in English French, Spanish, German, Chinese and Russian.  Read more