Giving away the audiobook for Michelle Paver's Viper's Daughter - read by Sir Ian McKellen, no less - may seem like a dumb idea to most publishers, but Head of Zeus are not most publishers. Read more
In 2007, as Apple's iTunes was cementing its dominance over digital music distribution, Amazon tried something bold. It launched the Amazon MP3 store, where all the music was DRM-free. It even used the slogan: "DRM: Don't Restrict Me." Read more
Famed writer and activist Cory Doctorow is selling the audio version of his upcoming book via Kickstarter to sidestep the walled garden of Amazon-owned audiobook platform Audible.
As much of the retail world faces crisis, book publishing is positioned to grow in terms of unit sales when compared to 2019. In fact, 2020 may prove to be one of the strongest sales years in recent memory.
The United Kingdom's Publishers Association is pointing out that while the government fast-tracked its plan to remove its 20-percent VAT (value added tax) on ebooks in late April-in light of the country's lockdowns at the time for the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic-audiobooks were not included in that move. Read more
Have you ever dropped a thermometer and watched its ball of mercury break into a scatter of glistening droplets? That's my mind right now. The table next to my bed is anchoring a tottering tower of books I have begun and then abandoned, not out of displeasure but because... Read more
I was an audiobook failure. Not a failure at writing the books, mind you, but at listening to them. I could never manage to get through more than a chapter or two, and then my interest would fizzle out and I wouldn’t go back. I’d try and fail every time.
Audiobooks are having a moment. As they soar in popularity, they are becoming increasingly creative - is the book you listen to now an artform in its own right, asks Clare Thorp.
For a while we were told that books were going to be a thing of the past. A new century had dawned, our lives were being digitised and surely there was no longer any reason to lug the pressed pulp of dead trees around. And yet, over the past decade, it seems clear that the death of the book has been greatly exaggerated. Read more
The author Bill Bryson is sitting before a lectern in Audible's London headquarters, narrating his latest book, a disquisition on human biology called The Body: A Guide For Occupants. Seen through the window of the recording booth, Bryson's face is largely obscured by the microphone in front of him, but his voice is clear and measured. Read more
'Booksellers have had many years of making themselves resilient, having had to live through the advent and growth of Amazon - they are entrepreneurial and hard-working, resourceful and creative.
Fifteen years ago, the once powerful book publisher Judith Regan, ruler of her own imprint at Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins, embarked on a project of dubious distinction. Somehow she convinced O.J. Simpson to get on board with a mea culpa manqué about the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. It would be called If I Did It, and it had the makings of a blockbuster. Read more
The rest of the publishing world should be fifty shades of envious.
On Friday, Sourcebooks announced that they are launching a new imprint with E.L. James. What's more, the author behind the hit Fifty Shades trilogy and The Mister is bringing her entire publishing catalog with her. Read more
In 2016, we had been open for one intense and educational year as the only romance-focused bookstore in the country. After one year of building a community of romance-loving customers, it became abundantly clear to us that readers were looking for more racial diversity in their romance novels. Read more
The acclaimed author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld has pulled out of translating Amanda Gorman's poetry into Dutch, after their publisher was criticised for picking a writer for the role who was not also Black. 'My family are too frightened to read my book': meet Europe's most exciting authors Read more Read more
Are you serious about putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and finally starting that novel idea you've had for years? Costa and Orange Prize shortlisted writer Monique Roffey offers her top five tips for getting the best out of your writing process - including finding your personal rhythm, getting into the habit of drafting and how to edit successfully.
Young authors may be self-censoring because they worry they will be "trolled" or "cancelled", according to celebrated writer Sir Kazuo Ishiguro.
Sir Kazuo, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017, warned that a "climate of fear" was preventing some people from writing what they want. Read more
When I first met my agent 10 years ago, I told her about a book I wanted to write about a lighthouse. I had the set-up in mind - a mystery based on the real-life vanishing of three keepers from the Flannan Isles in 1900 - but hadn't worked out yet how to tell it, if I even had it in me to write a novel, or if what I wrote would be any good. Read more
I've been a huge fan of Jeff VanderMeer's fiction since his noir fantasy novel Finch. In the years since, I've grown to admire-and envy-his range as an author, along with the depth of his imagination and his ability to send chills down my spine while enthralling me with his prose.
It's a tough decision for a writer to make, one of the toughest. All your life you've fantasized about one of the big New York publishers buying your book and its subsequent astronomical launch into the stratosphere. But it hasn't happened yet in spite of your eating, sleeping, and researching the craft of writing for years. Read more
Open to writers of any nationality writing in English
Entry fee for Best Unpublished Novel £49
Prize:
£15,000 for Best Unpublished Novel, an advance on a publishing deal with Bonnier and £10,000 for Best Published Novel
Submissions for the two 2021 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prizes are now open. The international prize is now in its sixth year. Entries are accepted from writers of any nationality, writing in English. The deadline is 7 March. Read more
I have discovered that I cannot burn a candle at one end and write a book with the other.'