Neil Gaiman has dug out a story he first wrote on a scrap of paper more than a decade ago and turned it into a new book for "anyone of any age who likes pirates, cooking, swashbuckling and/or doughnuts".
An independent bookshop that failed to sell a single book on a rainy day this week has been inundated with customers after publishing pictures of its empty aisles on social media.
The Petersfield Bookshop in Hampshire sent a melancholy tweet revealing that it had not welcomed one paying customer, probably for the first time in its 100-year history.
One of Neil Gaiman's best known and most influential works, The Sandman, is in development by Warner Bros. Television for Netflix for a live-action series of at least 10 episodes, according to today's (July 1) announcement from the streamer. Read more
Most Internet-savvy folks are already aware of MasterClass, an online-seminar platform that allows mere mortals to learn from people at the very top of their fields. Chef Thomas Keller may teach you how to make a sauce; Werner Herzog may teach you the ins and outs of camera lenses. Read more
Two great champions of reading for pleasure return to remind us that it really is an important thing to do - and that libraries create literate citizens
Words by Neil Gaiman and illustrations by Chris Riddell
We asked Hugo Award-winning authors Neil Gaiman and N.K. Jemisin to sit down and talk about books, writing, comics and whatever else came to mind. What followed was a wide-ranging discussion of cultural representation in comics, rereading your own work (or listening to it, as the case may be with audiobooks), and fighting for accurate television adaptations. Read more
We are not all Neil Gaiman. We can't all just write in whatever genre we want, whenever we want, and hope our audiences will follow us there. Established writers can't often-and probably shouldn't-publish far outside of their area of expertise. It's a fast way to alienate your existing fan base. Read more
Douglas Adams described the first ebooks "long before most commuter trains were filled with people reading them", according to his fellow novelist Neil Gaiman, but the late author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was still optimistic about the future of the book, predicting that "no matter what happens books will survive". Read more
'Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. Read more
'By the time I am nearing the end of a story, the first part will have been reread and altered and corrected at least one hundred and fifty times. I am suspicious of both facility and speed. Good writing is essentially rewriting. I am positive of this.'
Culture is a slippery concept; it's one of those terms we all know the meaning of until we actually think about it. For the writer, culture can be a two-edged sword: ignore it and your story lacks depth, colour and context; focus too much on it and you risk bamboozling - or worse, boring - your reader into putting the book down. Read more
Unpublished authors 18 years old or over resident in the UK.
Entry fee £8
Prize:
Book contract with HQ with advance of £7,500 and agent representation
The Primadonna Prize for unsigned and un-agented authors will, for the first time, offer the winner a book contract with HQ with an advance of £7,500 for world English rights. Read more
‘It's a big part of the job. Being able to put yourself in their shoes is really important. I'm not a writer, but I watch a lot of author content online and I read a lot of stuff from authors. Having that perspective is really important for me to be able to give my authors context. Their emotions are important. If they're disappointed we didn't sell, so am I.
Something interesting has been going on in publishing this year. Not the thumping increases in overall revenue - up 5 per cent to £6.7 billion across digital and physical books in the UK and Ireland. And not the surge in export markets: despite Brexit, exports are up 8 per cent to English language domains. Read more
People from many different industries have watched the rapid erosion of Twitter. While it remains up and running as of this date, millions of people have abandoned or shut down their accounts for reasons ranging from owner Elon Musk's reinstatement of former president Donald Trump's account to overall disenchantment with the role social media plays in our lives.
"Everyone always asks, so here you go," Aaliyah Aroha wrote in the caption of what would go on to become one of her most popular TikTok videos. She appears, lip-syncing to a song from the app-favorite Unofficial Bridgerton Musical and holding a stack of books, as the words "Enemies to Lovers book recommendations" float overhead. Read more
It was a dreary day in October, and the baby that was supposed to have arrived was already late. Maybe that means nothing to you, but to me, it meant that my out-of-office had long ago gone up and instead of holding my new baby, I was Googling the rates of stillbirth for post-term infants and the mortality rate of the women who carried them. Read more
At 91, Robert Gottlieb is perhaps the most acclaimed book editor of his time. He started out in 1955 and has been working in publishing ever since - serving as editor-in-chief at Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf and The New Yorker. The list of authors he's edited include Joseph Heller, Toni Morrison, John le Carré, Katharine Graham, Bill Clinton, Nora Ephron and Michael Crichton.
Author and screenwriter Fay Weldon has died "peacefully" at the age of 91, her agent Georgina Capel has confirmed.
The writer was best known for her novels exploring society and class. She penned more than 30, including The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (Sceptre) and Praxis (Coronet), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
'Pedestrian writing, thin characters-I can handle the criticism. I write to pedestrians. And I am a pedestrian. I write the best I can. I know I'm never going to be revered as some classic writer. I don't claim to be C. S. Lewis. The literary-type writers, I admire them. I wish I was smart enough to write a book that's hard to read, you know?'
'Go for broke'
'Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. Read more