Do we need to care for authors better, rethink staff workloads and pay more attention to each book? Yes. But the short answer to "can we publish less, but better?" is: not necessarily.
It was several hours after the Nobel prize for literature announcement before anyone was able to get hold of winner Annie Ernaux. The long-tipped, 82-year-old French writer was deep in work, avoiding her ringing phone to concentrate. When a Swedish journalist finally got in contact, she asked: "Are you sure?"
"I have been made redundant. I've lost my job," was the shocking news I received when I bumped into a former colleague recently. The news was delivered with a stoic smile, but the pain of this loss of a successful career was palpable, "I'm too young for retirement, I've still got so much to give." Her eyes welled up, my eyes welled up. Read more
When profits and sales soared in the first half of 2021, the heads of the major publishing companies knew they would face some difficult comparisons in 2022, and that's largely been the case. Read more
US book publishing generated $29.3bn (£25.7bn) industry-wide in 2021 compared to its 2020 revenues of $26.1bn (£22.9bn), an increase of 12.3%, according to the Association of American PublishersThe national trade association of the American book publishing industry; AAP has more than 300 members, including most of the major commercial publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly societies (AAP), with more people buying from bookshops. Read more
Publishing is facing "industry-wide burnout" according to a survey conducted by The Bookseller, which revealed 89% of staffers responding to the survey had experienced stress during the course of their work over the last year, while 69% reported burnout. Read more
Approximately 130 people, as well as others listening online, attended the Book Industry Study Group's first in-person annual meeting in three years, held April 22 in New York City. The meeting focused on the impact of the pandemic and continuing efforts to make the industry more inclusive.
'For God's sake, never use a metaphor and then explain it...
You can assume a world from so little and readers will. So I'm more interested economy than encyclopaedism, in how little you can get away with rather than how much you can cram in...
I don't want to write puzzle stories that can be decoded to the correct answer... Read more
Less than a year after an attempt on his life, author Salman Rushdie made a rare public appearance at an awards ceremony Thursday to warn of the dangers of banning books and of related movements in the US to roll back freedoms of expression.
"The information is telling me -" wrote Martin Amis in his 1995 novel The Information. "The information is telling me to stop saying hi and to start saying bye." It was an intimation of mortality typical of Amis, who died on Friday at the age of 73 - as interested in how stylishly the thought was expressed as in what it was expressing.
Accepting the coveted Caldecott medal in 1964, an annual award honouring the "most distinguished American picture book for children", the author Maurice Sendak addressed the rumbles of disapproval his winning book had received from some quarters about it being too frightening by wryly commenting, "Where the Wild Things Are was not meant to please everybody - only children."
The intellectual property rights to the novels of British-South African author Wilbur Smith are up for sale, with ACF investment bank handling the process.
Smith, who died in 2021, published over 50 novels in genres such as adventure and historical fiction. Smith's first novel When the Lion Feeds was published in 1964.
Today in good news, the American Booksellers Association announced that membership is at its highest level in 20 years. Per reporting by Hillel Italie at the Associated Press:
James Daunt keynoted the Association of American Literary Agents programme at Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/'s US Book Show in New York this week, telling home truths about Barnes & Noble, the company he has helmed since August 2019, in tandem with running Waterstones.
Do we need to care for authors better, rethink staff workloads and pay more attention to each book? Yes. But the short answer to "can we publish less, but better?" is: not necessarily.
Any bookish person who has ever passed through an airport in the United States will tend to have been struck by a contrast. Airport bookshops in the UK are piled high with thrillers, spy stories, romantic comedies and how-to books: untaxing fare for a long flight. Read more
It is not hard - at all - to trick today's chatbots into discussing taboo topics, regurgitating bigoted content and spreading misinformation. That's why AI pioneer Anthropic has imbued its generative AI, Claude, with a mix of 10 secret principles of fairness, which it unveiled in March. Read more
Almost 60% of LinkedIn's users are between the ages of 25 and 34, making it the single largest demographic to use the platform. And this is a demographic with a willingness to pay for news.
'The really heroic thing about Nick Hornby is that he lives in north London and rarely leaves it... Every English writer needs their corner that is forever England - but only a few brave men choose to make that corner Highbury.'
'Never use a metaphor and then explain it'
'For God's sake, never use a metaphor and then explain it...
You can assume a world from so little and readers will. So I'm more interested economy than encyclopaedism, in how little you can get away with rather than how much you can cram in...
I don't want to write puzzle stories that can be decoded to the correct answer... Read more