In 2009, two bookshops a week were closing in the UK and the days of physical books seemed numbered. Now, indie stores are booming. What explains the turnaround - and can it be sustained?
A few years ago, Amber Harrison and Karen Brazier were both experiencing burnout in their respective careers. The neighbours turned friends worked long hours that often took them away from their beloved home town of Shaftesbury, Dorset.
Waterstones managing director and Barnes & Noble c.e.o. James Daunt has hailed the "wonderfully robust" market as sales and footfall increase in the UK and US, but has said he expects book prices will increase due to rising costs.
A bookseller in Kent has gone viral after tweeting a picture of her empty shop. Here, other retailers explain how they are surviving - even thriving - when many people are counting every penny
"Booksellers are constantly giving their patrons extraordinary bargains. In London recently a copy of an early edition of Keats' Poems, originally bought from a dealer for 2s was sold for £140, and a first edition of Burns' Poems bought in Edinburgh for 1s 6d brought £350." Read more
Managing director of the Booksellers Association (BA) Meryl Halls has thanked publishers for their "ongoing support for the BA and bookselling" in an "unpredictable and sometimes unsettling" 2022 but called on them to be "commercially supportive of bookshops" and to invest practically and emotionally in the bookselling sector to ensure it survives what has the potential to be a "brutal" year in Read more
After soaring 18.9% in the first half of 2021 over the comparable period in 2020, unit sales of print books retreated in the first half of 2022, dropping 6.6% from 2021 levels. According to NPD BookScan, total first-half print sales were 362.6 million, down from 386.6 million a year ago. Read more
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. Read more
‘My settings of Europe and English visitors weren't really doing it for them, so we decided Scotland would be good. I thought an island would be great, because it's a small community, and it's an opportunity for my main character to get away from it all. The team at HarperCollins have been so supportive and enthusiastic... Read more
For the past five years or so, I've read books on my phone. The practice started innocently enough. I write book reviews from time to time, and so publishers sometimes send me upcoming titles that fall roughly within my interests. Read more
The Guardian calls Irish-Indian poet Nikita Gill "Britain's most-followed poet on social media"-she has 780,000 Instagram followers and 180,000 TikTok followers, and her Instapoetry has been reshared by the likes of Khloe Kardashian, Alanis Morissette, and Sam Smith-and she has published seven volumes of poetry and two novels in the U.K. But she is far less known on this side of the pond. Read more
Nikkolas Smith knows a thing or two about book bans. The illustrator has created five picture books over the last three years-four of which have been yanked off library shelves. There's I am Ruby Bridges, about the civil rights icon; That Flag about the confederate flag; Born on the Water, which explores slavery; and The Artivist which features a child supporting trans kids.
Simon & Schuster has acquired the largest Dutch publishing group Veen Bosch & Keuning, including all of its publishers in the Netherlands and Belgium, as well as sister companies Thinium and Bookchoice.
The Publishers Association (PA) has criticised the government's response to a House of Lords report on AI, saying that it has failed to make "any tangible commitments to protect the creative industries against mass copyright infringement".
My publisher wife looks across at me reading a proof of one of her soon-to-be-released thrillers. 'The setting is great, isn't it?' she says. 'Really good,' I reply. 'Very generous.' Read more
'You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.'
'I'm very reassuringly honest'
‘My settings of Europe and English visitors weren't really doing it for them, so we decided Scotland would be good. I thought an island would be great, because it's a small community, and it's an opportunity for my main character to get away from it all. The team at HarperCollins have been so supportive and enthusiastic... Read more