Skip to Content

Book sales

Syndicate content

Linked items...

Waterstones sale good for writers

30 April 2018

The sale of Waterstones to activist hedge fund Elliott Advisers has been widely welcomed in the book trade and is very much in the interests of writers. Like Barnes & Noble in the US, the British bookstore chain occupies a key position in terms of chain bookselling.  Read more

Daunt on bookselling

19 March 2018

It's unusual to find a book chain boss who went into bookselling because he liked reading, but James Daunt, founder of Daunts bookshop chain in London, and CEO of the Waterstones chain in the UK, is that rare animal. Encouragingly, he still maintains that: 'Books still work and always will'.  Read more

World Poetry Day and new ebook platform Bookgrail

20 March 2017

World Poetry Day has been marked by the publication of some encouraging sales figures from the UK, showing sales up 16% on last year in the first quarter. But a lot of these sales seem to be driven by social media and to feature poets who are appealing to a young female audience.  Read more

Looking forward to the autumn

17 August 2015

As many in the northern hemisphere are still sunning themselves (or sitting out the rain if they're in the UK), the book trade is hotting up for the autumn. In the UK It looks as if 8 October will be Super Thursday, when the combination of big books being launched reaches its peak. A successful generic Booksellers' Association promotion, Books Are My Bag, will launch on the same day.  Read more

Publishers go for online reader communities

10 February 2014

Online communities are the way things are going. Publishers have been trying to establish communities of readers to sell books to for some time, but now an author blogger has called for them to set up communities of writers too, and perhaps even communities of publishers and freelances as well.  Read more

Shock horror announcement

28 May 2012

That’s not putting too strongly the chorus of disapproval which greeted the surprise announcement from James Daunt of Waterstones that he had agreed an alliance with Amazon which would see Waterstones selling Kindles in their shops and providing wi-fi acess so that customers can browse the shop’s stock and then order ebooks on their Kindles.  Read more