Last week News Review looked at how publishers are reacting to digitalisation. This week will concentrate on how it is affecting bookselling and the outlook for the future. Read more
Digitalisation has become such a huge issue in the book world that News Review will be investigating the latest developments over the next two weeks. First, what are publishers doing about it and how will this impact on writers? Read more
Publishers are beginning to take the initiative in the Google Print wars, perhaps not before time, as they suddenly find themselves confronted by a digital future which is not somewhere off in the future but very much in the here and now. The hard lesson the Napster free downloads taught the music business has not been lost on the big publishers. Read more
A summer promotion from Microsoft offers three free e-books a week for download using their Reader Software. The offer will run from July through to November and includes bestselling titles such as Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin. Read more
‘I always quote Kurt Vonnegut. He said in the early part of his career he was dismissed as a science fiction writer and that critics tend to put genre books, including sci-fi, in the bottom drawer of their desk... It's true. I get the New York Times every Sunday. In 37 novels, I've never had a stand-alone review. I'm always in the crime round-up.
A survey of 787 members of the Society of Authors (SoA) has found that a third of translators and a quarter of illustrators have lost work to generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. Translators are also more likely to use AI to support their work, with 37% of respondents saying they have done so, followed by 25% of non-fiction writers.
The author Lynne Reid Banks, known for her novel The L-Shaped Room and her children's book series The Indian in the Cupboard, has died at the age of 94.
I launched my podcast Making It Up nearly three years ago with the goal of interviewing writers not for any particular work of theirs, but to talk to them about their lives. I didn't want to ask them what famous author they want to have dinner with or what their top five favorite books are ... yech. Read more
Until we have a mechanism to test for artificial intelligence, writers need a tool to maintain trust in their work. So I decided to be completely open with my readers