The e-commerce giant has increased its prices, while the number of independent booksellers continues to rise.
Links of the week May 23 2022 (21)
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:
30 May 2022
Let's set the scene: it's the year 2010, the Viggo Mortensen-fronted film The Road has just been released in cinemas, and you want to read the Cormac McCarthy novel the movie is based on. You could buy it from Waterstones for the recommended retail price (RRP) of £7.99 - or you could go to Amazon and buy it for half the price, just £4.
Twelve years later, if you want to read the same novel, the balance has changed: while the novel's RRP has only risen to £8.99, on Amazon the price has gone up to £7.35. That 50 per cent saving Amazon customers made in 2010 has narrowed to less than 20 per cent.
Amazon is now so ubiquitous that it can be easy to forget it began as a bookseller - but Mike Shatzkin, the publishing industry veteran and the author of The Book Business: What Everyone Needs to Know, says that when he first heard about it in 1995 he knew it was "f***ing brilliant". "Books are the very best thing to buy online, because you don't have to smell it, you don't have to try it on," Shatzkin says. "It's exactly what it says it is."
E-book sales fell in 2021 to lowest point since 2012, Nielsen data reveals
UK e-book purchases in 2021 dropped to their lowest point since 2012 following a record 2020, new data from Nielsen BookData has revealed.
However, because of higher prices being paid, estimated spending on e-books remained above 2012, 2013 and 2019 levels.
According to Nielsen's UK Book Market in Review 2021 report, 80 million e-books were downloaded in 2021, equating to just over one in five books bought for the year, adding up to £342m, 13% of overall market value. By comparison, e-book sales had risen 16% year on year in 2020 to 95 million.
At a hearing held Thursday morning by the U.S. House Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, chair Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) introduced into record a letter drafted by two-time Newbery Honor-winning author Christina Soontornvat, along with fellow authors Phil Bildner, Alex London, and Ellen Oh. The letter, which urged congressional protection against book bans, was signed by more than 1,300 children's authors, including Judy Blume, Jason Reynolds, Rick Riordan, and Jacqueline Woodson. The hearing was the second on the topic of "political attacks on free speech and classroom censorship." The subcommittee has jurisdiction over issues related to civil rights, civil liberties and the equal protection of laws, including freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly.
In his opening statement, Raskin said that books such as Raina Telgemeier's Drama were targeted for censorship because they "address the historical and psychological reality of race, gender, sexual orientation, or power in ways that are deemed politically incorrect." Raskin continued, stating, "Book censorship wrecks a healthy environment for free inquiry and learning" and that he was heartened by determination to fight for "the freedom to think, to read, to debate, to discuss, and to explore," which he had observed from students, parents, teacher, and authors.
The age old conundrum of which came first, the chicken or the egg, can definitely be applied to author branding and the genres across which an author writes. While many authors establish a brand based on the books they write, others write books (especially non-fiction) inspired by an existing brand. Since what we want to write and who we are as people can evolve over time, it becomes hard to tell which came first or which is leading our literary evolution.
We might ask ourselves... Do we write in a specific genre because it aligns with our interests, personality, and expertise? Do we limit ourselves to a specific genre because we have already established it as our brand? Do we adapt our brand to fit the stories we want to write?
The farther an author strays out of a specific category, the more challenging we become to brand. Some authors address this challenge by creating pen names for different genres of work. I'm more interested in how we can unify works in multiple genres under one overarching brand. In order to accomplish this, we need a clear understanding about what this means.
Anthony Horowitz has said "children's publishers are more scared than anybody" when it comes to so-called cancel culture, saying he was shocked when receiving the notes for his new work.
Horowitz, author of the Alex Rider series as well as numerous novels for adults, told Hay Festival attendees on 27th May he had recently "suffered" through the edits on his latest book for younger people Where Seagulls Dare: A Diamond Brothers Case, due to be published next month by Walker Books.
"I have just suffered from my last book notes from my publisher which absolutely shocked me about things that I could or couldn't say, which is a children's book, not an adult book," the Times reported.
Books and magazine articles have long provided the IP Hollywood depends on, but until recently, authors played little role in the process. Now, lit agencies and publishers are changing the rules and shortening the page-to-screen pipeline.
With fewer layers between the creators of the written stories in question and those calling the shots on the film or TV version, it's easier to preserve authenticity - something that today's increasingly devout literary fan bases require. And by serving as producers, agents are able to defend the authors' interest. Such deals allow them, for instance, to advocate for the authors themselves to work in a screenwriting capacity, something that's becoming increasingly common: Sally Rooney worked alongside former Succession scribe Alice Birch to create Normal People; Lisa Taddeo is in the writers room for Showtime's adaptation of her blockbuster Three Women; and Brandon Taylor penned the script based on his debut novel, Real Life, to which Kid Cudi is attached to star and produce.
Wanda Whiteley on the six things she learned as she moved from editor to author, as well as some things to consider once you have a manuscript that you're happy with.
1 It is much easier to doctor someone else's work than to see faults in one's own. Trying to critique your own work is almost as impossible as psychoanalysing oneself.
We praise canonical authors for their boundless imagination.
Then why do all their plots feel the same?
jane austen
Your obligation to make a judicious alliance with an alluring newcomer is constantly pressed upon you by your relations. You despise them all.
With Goodreads, BookTube, Bookstagram, and the #LitTwit community on Twitter, bookworms have been talking about books on social media for years. With BookTok's recent emergence into the scene of bookish social media, especially with how impactful it has been on the sales of books both new and old, it got me wondering how the platform has changed the way we talk about books.
Do we use different terms for book recommendations or reviews than we did ten years ago? Do we ask for different types of books, or just ask differently? I decided to find out.
Book subscriptions are showing little sign of slowing down after their boom during lockdown, those behind the services say, despite a spike in the cost of living.
Last year, publishers and booksellers saw dramatic increases in the numbers of people signing up to digital and physical subscription models as readers stayed at home during lockdown, with the rate of demand increasing tenfold for some booksellers.
Despite their ongoing popularity, subscription providers have all said they are concerned about the impact of the cost of living on their customers. Media giants such as Netflix have reported cancelled subscriptions in their masses as customers feel the pinch elsewhere, and book companies have acknowledged those taking out a subscription are among consumers who can afford to buy books regularly, and are working to introduce lower-priced subscription options and provide extras, such as discounted tickets to events and gifts from partnering brands in each subscription box.
Calls have been made for the industry to "decolonise" the trade by promoting publishers in African and Caribbean countries acquiring territorial and language rights and pushing back against major Anglophone presses hoovering up world rights.
Authors, agents and editors at smaller presses have expressed concern about some publishers pushing for world rights and not properly utilising them, either focusing on major European languages, or producing books that are too expensive to purchase in many parts of the world.
I wasn't surprised last week at a literary festival when the chair turned to one of the panellists, a well-respected popular journalist who's written a novel, and asked her: ‘You're writing for a Mumsnet audience with this book, aren't you?'. Implicit in it is the dismissiveness rife whenever women write and read fiction that isn't a) literary b) crime or thriller. (She also hasn't got the memo: Mumsnet is a hotbed of radicalism, haven't you heard?). In the audience there were audible murmurs of irritation. But as I say, I wasn't surprised. Seventeen years since my first novel was published I've grown wearily used to defending both commercial fiction by women and the habits and assumptions made about female readerships.
Women over 45 are the ones buying hardbacks as presents and tickets for festivals. The ones doing the weekly shop and seeing books in supermarkets, queuing up at WHSmith at the airport with paperbacks under their arms. They are the sandwich generation, caring for parents and children and doing the lion's share of homeschooling and housework during the pandemic whilst holding down jobs, still finding time to be curious, read other people's stories. They are setting up social media accounts to discuss books they love, buying books for grandchildren, visiting libraries and joining book clubs. (There are many book clubs.)
Ryan was four years old when he started unboxing toys on camera in 2015. A few years later-assisted by his mother, who left her job as a high school teacher to work with him full time-he was YouTube's highest-earning star, of any age. He made a record-breaking $29.5 million in 2020, releasing daily videos that blur the line between entertainment and commerce. His channel, now called Ryan's World, has generated more than 60 billion views. I found out about Ryan when my then-four-year-old son became enamored with the videos. As Ryan opened boxes and talked about new toys, he created a virtual space of limitless wonder for kids-including my own.
When it comes to children's experiences, today's media ecosystem is dramatically different from the one in which I grew up. In addition to multiple cable television networks with ad-supported children's programming available around the clock, a proliferation of new online channels feature short, on-demand, "snackable" forms of amateur video.
Plus, parents can download a variety of content from sources like Netflix and Amazon and play them on portable devices for their kids anytime and anywhere. In a sea of choice, young users move freely from channel to channel and device to device, from large screens to small ones, through an endless variety of professionally and not-so-professionally produced short-, medium-, and long-form content.
I was named after a crime novel. My parents chose my nickname, Polly, after Dorothy Sayers's Lady Mary Wimsey, a rebellious aristocrat who defies her upper-class family and sometimes assists her brother, Lord Peter, in solving crimes. When I was growing up, my mom relaxed each night after dinner with a glass of Chardonnay, a pack of Virginia Slims, and a paperback mystery by Ngaio Marsh or Colin Dexter. I remember thinking how great it would be to write a book that someone could disappear into like that. What was it about crime fiction that she loved so much? How did these writers keep her attention, and how could I do the same thing?
When I became a novelist, I formulated this question in more technical terms. A crime is defined as an act that is punishable by law. How does the inclusion of this kind of act direct the course of a story? Why is it that for me and readers like me, a novel with a crime in it is immediately more engaging than a novel defined by other elements-love, or aliens, or a setting in the distant past? Crime fiction doesn't need to include murder or assault or even violence to pique my interest, but unless someone is transgressing the bounds of social and moral convention, it probably isn't going to hold my attention.
"Mistakes might be inevitable, but I think they are worth mitigating."
Maybe five years ago I read a novel in which a man drowns in a lake, and, a few minutes later, his body is found floating on the water's surface.
If any of my writer friends are reading this, they're probably groaning because they've heard me harp on this example before. What can I say? Sometimes I'm irritating and pedantic. But here's the thing: it doesn't make any sense for that body to float. If bodies were inherently buoyant, no one would ever drown. For that scenario to work, the man's lungs would have filled with water, pulling him under and killing him, and then, almost immediately, something - the condition of death? - would have sent his body rocketing back up to the surface, where, despite being heavier now than before, he floated. No. Bodies float because gases of decomposition eventually lift them. The process takes time: at least a couple days even in relatively warm, shallow water, longer in colder, deeper water. Many bodies never surface at all. But the image of the floating body is pervasive in our culture and our entertainment ("We've got a floater," says one TV cop to another), so familiar that a writer may skip directly from drowning to floating without stopping to think.
The bestselling novelists are friends and fans of each other's work. They talk frankly about the highs of writing and the lows of addiction - and why neither of them would do Strictly
Interviewing Osman and Keyes is like being caught in a cuddle between two national treasures, albeit a slightly lopsided one. The photo shoot - Osman's 6 ft 7 next to the diminutive Keyes with her dark fringe and spiky eyelashes - resembles one between Roald Dahl's BFG and Matilda. Hair and makeup, let alone personal makeup artists, are not par for the course for author interviews, but this is the only sign of their super-brand status. At 51 and 58 respectively, they are as lovely (a favourite word for both) as everyone's mum says, and they really love their mums (to whom their novels are dedicated). Happily, they are not too nice for a good gossip about certain high-profile figures.
Ten years after its publication, this literary sensation still casts a long shadow over the psychological thriller market. But does the novel hold up?
No matter how many times it happens, I'm still excited every time I get my hands on an advance reading copy of a book that has yet to be published. How thrilling to turn to page one with almost no idea what I'm in for, before review coverage has begun, before any overly enthusiastic friend gives too much away.
When I received a galley of Gone Girl in 2011, I had no preconceived notions other than the fact that I knew that author Gillian Flynn had written two prior thrillers, and I'd been a fan of her work when she was on staff at Entertainment Weekly. I was certainly not primed to expect a perfectly paced and perfectly nuanced he said/she said story, especially not one with an audacious plot twist that strikes right smack in the middle of the book and absolutely blows up every word that has come before. I had never read anything quite like it. I still have never read anything like it. Although now, ten years after the official publication of Gone Girl, many others have tried to emulate its style and edge.
Procrastinators, boss-havers, degenerate undergraduates, lend me your ears. Have you ever added surplus spaces on an essay to meet a minimum page requirement? Sneakily increased the font size on periods to pad your page count? Claimed to be working toward a deadline when you most definitely, assuredly were not?
If this sounds like you, then come sit by George R.R. Martin. Martin, you may remember, is suffering from the most public case of writer's block in human history. He's been writing The Winds of Winter, the highly-anticipated penultimate volume in his Game of Thrones series, since at least 2010-and now, as if to make up for over a decade of missed deadlines, he's speaking out on how the book is worth the wait (funny, I think I told my British Lit professor the same thing when I needed an extension). "The Winds of Winter is going to be a big book," he wrote on his blog. "The way it is going, it could be bigger than A Storm of Swords or A Dance With Dragons, the longest books in the series to date. I do usually cut and trim once I finish, but I need to finish first."
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