Several years ago, while I was dealing with the death of a close family member, a strange thing happened: I suddenly found myself unable to stop watching Supernatural. I'd never been a huge fan of the show, but I'd recently decided to catch up on its many seasons. So I began marathoning episodes - though it was more like I inhaled them at a level approaching nihilism.
Over the weekend fanfiction website Archive of our Own went down, to the dismay of fanfic readers everywhere. While it's not the result of any one fic, despite what some fans thought, it's a reflection of how much the pandemic has changed our fanfiction reading habits.
Once upon a time, writing and sharing fan fiction on the internet carried a distinct stigma. Extending other people's universes or characters was widely seen as an outlet for the uncreative, the unsocial, and the sexually frustrated.
With some 60 million monthly users-90% of whom are Millennials and Gen Z-spending more than 15 billion minutes per month reading content on Wattpad, the Canadian-based storytelling platform is a goldmine of information about what's most popular with young readers around the world.
However it started, however you define it, and whether or not you read it, at this point you've probably heard of fan fiction (abbreviated as "fanfic" by its enthusiasts). Read more
"Do you know what a lot of teenage girls have been doing as a hobby?" YA novelist Zan Romanoff recently asked on the podcast Call Your Girlfriend. "Writing porn for each other for free. That's, like, their favorite thing to do."
Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes wasn't the first of his kind-Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin arguably owns that distinction-but The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was revolutionary nevertheless. Placing beautifully drawn characters in a series of self-contained episodic conundrums was groundbreaking, anticipating the blockbuster movie franchises and TV series to come. Read more
Through their remarkable ubiquity, J.K. Rowling's series and the films based on it shaped an entire generation to an unprecedented and still unreckoned-with degree. Read more
'I'm very reassuringly honest. It's a job as well as a calling. It's my living - I'm the chief breadwinner in my house. My husband is retired, he supported me through the two decades while I wasn't making enough to live on, and was doing all kinds of things to do with writing to survive - judging competitions, running workshops, appraising manuscripts.
‘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".
'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