Links of the week October 1 2012 (40)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
8 October 2012
Richard Curtis says: 'Few subjects have elicited as much wild conjecture as the prices of e-books. Reading rabid allegations of price-gouging, one has to wonder what these critics know about manufacturing costs that we in the e-book industry don’t.'
1 October 2012
Ursula Mackenzie, President of the UK Publishers Association, outlined a strategy for stronger alliances between publishers and booksellers in a speech to the Booksellers' Association conference last week, reported on in Bookbrunch.
Predicting the future has always been a dangerous game, but I am willing to put my marker down for a hybrid world, with a mixed economy of physical and digital reading. Some recent statistics from the US are interesting - a year ago 70% of ebook consumers said they read exclusively in the digital format, while one year later that number has dropped by 10% to 60%. And ebook growth is slowing dramatically - in September 2011, growth was still 101% year on year, but by April 2012 it was only 37%. Even 50 Shades - originally a self-published ebook as we all know - has split equally between print and ebooks in the US.
With writers increasingly tempted to do everything for themselves, Tim Bates of Pollinger Ltd tells us why a literary agent is still a good thing to have.
In an unusual sign of publishers getting increasingly tough with authors who don't deliver, New York publisher Penguin filed lawsuits this week against several prominent writers who failed to deliver books for which they received hefty contractual advances.
A New York publisher this week filed lawsuits against several prominent writers who failed to deliver books for which they received hefty contractual advances, records show
In the days leading up to Curtis BrownSee Curtis Brown listing's Discovery Day at Foyles, Charing Cross Road, on Saturday (22 September), people kept asking me: why are you doing this? They said it so many times that it started to make me nervous...
In the days leading up to Curtis BrownSee Curtis Brown listing's Discovery Day at Foyles, Charing Cross Road, on Saturday (22 September), people kept asking me: why are you doing this? They said it so many times that it started to make me nervous...