An "upbeat" and busy Bologna Children's Book Fair 2025 has seen a marked appetite for shorter and illustrated works - despite there being no runaway book of the fair - though the grim state of geopolitics dimmed many fairgoers' moods.
Links of the week March 31 2025 (14)
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:
7 April 2025
Belinda Rasmussen, in her first Bologna as Walker Books' global president and publisher after moving over from Macmillan Children's Books last year, reported being "busier than ever", with "back-to-back meetings and lots of partnership conversations". She added: "I'm still seeing lots of beautiful and innovative picture books. Everybody's experimenting with graphic novels and there's lots of YA. It feels as if [interest from foreign publishers] is not concentrated, they're asking for everything. But people are a little worried about middle-grade and are looking for easier, more accessible, shorter, illustrated books because I think we're all concerned about this decline in reading for pleasure."
Hazel Holmes, publisher at UCLan Publishing, also noted "lots of talk about middle-grade in particular", which, says Holmes, "seems to be quite hard to sell at the moment", though she is noticing increased interest in horror titles for middle-grade readers.
The global graphic novel market is getting more attention in Bologna this year, with an expanded number of exhibitors and panels dedicated to the topic. "Graphic novels represent one of the most significant growth areas in children's publishing globally," Peter Warwick, CEO of Scholastic, said during a panel celebrating the 20th anniversary of Scholastic's Graphix imprint. He pointed out that author Dav Pilkey's latest book sold more than two and a half million copies worldwide since its December release and attributed at least some of that success to the format's particular appeal to boys. "Our most recent event with Dav in the U.K. was in a venue that seated 2,000 people. It was full. Of the children who were there, over 90% were boys."
Renata Gorgani, CEO of Editrice Il Castoro, described the market transformation in Italy. "We started with graphic novels in 2014, publishing the first Raina Telgemeier book Smile. And this was the beginning of the growth of graphic novels in Italy," she said. "If you think that today the market is 10 times what it was in 2014-10 times-it's really something. It changed the world." Her company now publishes major series including Raina Telgemeier, Amulet, and the Babysitters Club, helping to drive the category's growth.
Both executives highlighted how graphic novels have overcome early skepticism from educators. "When we first started doing graphic novels, there was a certain amount of reluctance sometimes among librarians and teachers, particularly in parents as to whether graphic novels are ‘real' books," Warwick said. This resistance has diminished as the format proved its worth for developing readers.
The explosion of generative artificial intelligence technologies, including such large language models as ChatGPT, caught many in the book business off guard when it began in earnest in late 2023. Once it became clear that those models had been trained on vast amounts of copyrighted material without permission or compensation, publishing found itself thrown without warning into the ring with Big Tech.
As the industry continues to grapple with the implications of AI, its leaders are advocating for a balanced approach to incorporating the tech in a way that protects copyright while still allowing for innovation. That showdown has now reached the presidential level: last week, industry organizations including the Association of American PublishersThe national trade association of the American book publishing industry; AAP has more than 300 members, including most of the major commercial publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly societies (AAP) and the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) delivered responses to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy's request for public comment regarding the development of the administration's Artificial Intelligence Action Plan.
If you're self-publishing, designing a professional-quality book cover can make the difference between attracting readers or getting overlooked.
A compelling book cover isn't just an aesthetic choice-it's your book's first impression, sales tool, and marketing asset. If you're self-publishing, designing a professional-quality book cover can make the difference between attracting readers or getting overlooked. To craft a standout cover that resonates with your audience, follow these essential guidelines.
I started Forest Avenue Press in 2012 to publish the kinds of novels I love to read.
When I started, to give authors a chance, I read hundreds of pages of submissions that didn't appeal to me. After all, I had been sitting on the other side of the editorial desk for years, dreaming of acceptance. How could I say no to a novel without reading 50 pages and seeing if the fifty-first was where the story really started?
Eventually I learned to trust my instincts. If a novel doesn't interest me from the query letter and the opening pages, I probably don't want to spend the next 18 months working on it. If it's offensive to me in concept or execution, I don't want to put my shoulder against it and move it forward into the world. Trusting myself made me a more efficient and honest reviewer of manuscripts.
This insight trickled into my writing life and helped me make a terrifying decision. After several years of writing, I cut my protagonist out of my novel.
The US nonprofit, whose online community encouraged members to write a novel in a month, has been rocked by controversy in recent years
NaNoWriMo, the US-based nonprofit organisation that challenged people to write a novel in a month, has announced it is closing down after 20 years.
NaNoWriMo - an abbreviation of National Novel Writing Month - fostered an online community of participants aiming to write 50,000 words of fiction in November. It began informally in 1999 before becoming a nonprofit in 2006. Each year, tens of thousands signed up to the organisation's flagship programme.
On Monday, NaNoWriMo announced its closure to community members via email. A 27-minute YouTube video posted the same day by the organisation's interim executive director Kilby Blades explained that it had to close due to ongoing financial problems, which were compounded by reputational damage.
April is Stress Awareness Month, an initiative designed to put emotional wellbeing at the forefront and a good time to revisit pastoral care in the publishing industry. But how would you, as a publishing professional, know if an author is stressed? And what can you do about it if they are?
The charity, Mind, defines stress as how we react when we feel under pressure in a situation we don't think we can manage or control. According to the Stress Management Society, 79% of us experience stress at least once a month and 74% of us have felt overwhelmed in the past year. Although it's not a mental health condition in itself, feeling burnt out can be a gateway to other problems, including anxiety, addictions and low mood.
Being an author is a dream job - so why the angst? Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which I practice, is based on the theory that we all have our own unique set of thoughts, behaviours and feelings that link to how we see ourselves, other people, and the world - and this includes insecurities which can be activated in certain situations. In therapy, we call these critical incidents. They're like inciting incidents in novels: events that cause a character (in this case, the author) to be thrown off balance. And when we're in stressful situations, we can revert to our bottom lines - our negative beliefs about ourselves.
Academic publisher Taylor & Francis (T&F) has announced plans to use AI translation tools to publish books "that would otherwise be unavailable to English-language readers".
Last year, T&F, whose parent company Informa also owns the academic publisher Routledge, became the first UK-based publisher to confirm it had made deals worth tens of millions of pounds with tech companies, including Microsoft, to sell its authors' backlist to train AI chatbots - a move which its authors claimed at the time didn't include remuneration for authors, or ask for their permission. T&F has since told The Bookseller that "rightsholders" including authors will be paid a share from its AI partnerships, although it hasn't disclosed how much, in accordance with their contracts.
Meta has used millions of pirated books to develop its AI programmes, as reported in the Atlantic, provoking outcry from many writers and organisations such as the Society of Authors (SoA).
The American publication published a searchable database of more than 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers. This data set, called Library Genesis or ‘LibGen' for short, is full of pirated material, and all of it has been used to develop AI systems by tech giant Meta.
According to the Atlantic, court documents show that staff at Meta discussed licensing books and research papers lawfully but instead chose to use stolen work because it was faster and cheaper and Meta argued that it could then use the US's ‘fair use exception' defence if it was challenged legally. The SoA released a statement that said: "Given that Meta Platforms, Inc, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has a market capitalisation of £1.147 trillion, this is appalling behaviour."
The organisation added: "It is not yet clear whether scraping from copyright works without permission is unlawful under the US fair use exception to copyright, but if that scraping is for commercial purposes (which what Meta is doing surely is) it cannot be fair use. Under the UK fair dealing exception to copyright, there is no question that scraping is unlawful without permission."
‘I am a crime writer, I understand theft,' said Val McDermid - joining Richard Osman, Kazuo Ishiguro and Kate Mosse in their appeal to Lisa Nandy to act on their behalf
A group of prominent authors including Richard Osman, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kate Mosse and Val McDermid have signed an open letter calling on the UK government to hold Meta accountable over its use of copyrighted books to train artificial intelligence.
The letter asked Lisa Nandy, the secretary of state for culture, media and sport, to summon Meta senior executives to parliament.
"There is a longstanding contractual obligation that when third parties make use of an author's work they compensate us," said McDermid when asked why she signed the letter. "Adaptation, translation, photocopying - they all accept the duty to recompense us for making their work possible.
"I'm a crime writer - I understand theft when I see it. And by using pirated material, Meta are stealing from us twice over. I don't think it's at all surprising that we're outraged."
A number of authors including Richard Osman, Val McDermid, Kate Mosse, Kazuo Ishiguro and Sarah Waters have signed an open letter from the Society of Authors (SoA) demanding that Meta be held to account by the UK government following allegations in the US that authors' works have been used without permission or remuneration to train its artificial intelligence (AI) model.
The open letter comes after a story in the Atlantic under the headline "The Unbelievable Scale of AI's Pirated-Books Problem" was published on March 20th 2025, detailing "a number of shocking allegations about the practices which were adopted by Meta at the time of the development of its AI model, Llama 3".
A searchable database of more than 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers was published by the Atlantic as part of its report. This data set, called Library Genesis, or "LibGen" for short, is full of pirated material, all of which has been used to develop AI systems by tech-giant Meta.
Ahead of the Black British book festival, literary figures say the number of books being published by Black writers has ‘plummeted'
UK publishing is less accessible to Black authors now than it was five years ago, according to some of the biggest names in the industry.
The Black Lives Matter movement of 2020 led to many publishing houses making commitments to address the longstanding racial inequality in the industry. But, ahead of the Black British book festival (BBBF) this weekend, a number of Black literary figures say there has been a noticeable downward shift in the number of Black writers being published.
Selina Brown, who founded BBBF in 2021, said the number of Black authors being pitched to her has dropped dramatically in the last 18 months. She also believes the number of books being published by Black writers has "plummeted".
"Some publishers were saying ‘we don't have anything to give you'. Publishers are now seeing diverse authors as a ‘risk', so Black and brown authors aren't being taken on," Brown said.
A survey of ghostwriters has suggested female writers earn about half as much as their male counterparts as well as major pay differences between the UK and US.
Pooling 51 of the bestselling ghostwriters, the research from the Ghostwriters Agency has reflected stark pay differences across gender and geography, considering both private commissions and those from publishers. According to those surveyed, publishing companies who employ ghostwriters in the UK reportedly pay male ghostwriters around £27,000 per book, while their female counterparts receive only £13,800.
Across the pond, however, the American female respondents said they were paid £100,000 by publishers compared to the male writers on £55,000.
From The Wolves of Willoughby Chase to Black Hearts in Battersea, Joan Aiken's tales of plucky orphans surviving in industrial Britain are a keystone of children's literature
There was once a poor widow with two young children who wrote to her agent to ask what had happened to the novel she had sent him. Her husband had died, leaving nothing but debts, and matters were becoming desperate. However, she was not quite the usual aspiring author: for one thing, she was the daughter of a Pulitzer prize-winning poet; for another, she had already published two collections of short stories. It turned out that her agent had forgotten all about it. Her manuscript had been sitting on the windowsill in his office for a year, unread. That manuscript was The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.
Its rapturous reception when it was published in 1962 turned its 38-year-old author, Joan Aiken, into one of the most beloved writers of all time. This year marks the centenary of her birth, and if ever there is a time to discover her more than 100 books for children and adults, it is now.
Hanna Thomas Uose on the publication of her debut novel, Who Wants to Live Forever
I had never considered writing a novel until the age of thirty-four, when an idea landed in my head one day. My jobs in campaigns and advocacy had required lots of writing - from petition emails to position papers - and in the 2010s, I had a very twee blog (full of craft projects and ukuleles). I'd even dabbled in poetry. But a novel? That felt delusional. If I wanted to write fiction, surely I should have mastered that skill long ago, along with learning to swim or ride a bike.
The idea wouldn't leave me alone though. I wrote a short story version of it, then ummed and ahhed over whether to take myself seriously and give the story a shot at being what it wanted to be - a novel. An encouraging push from Kerry Ryan at Write Like a Grrrl got me going. Soon, I had mapped out the chapters with post-its on my living room door and there was no stopping me.
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