Reading

Last year, I finally realised that my habit of seeing everything through to the end was just a colossal waste of time

When book sales spiked in 2020 and 2021, publishers believed one reason for the increase was that more people had turned to reading during the pandemic, and they were hopeful that some of those people would continue to read when things returned to normal. However, a new report from the National Endowment for the Arts seems to dash those hopes.

It feels like we live in an era of constant distraction, but the truth is more complex

When I heard Covid was keeping inmates in cells, I drove a car load of donated books to Pentonville. It became a project that now delivers thousands of books to British jails

If there's one lesson my agent and editors drilled into me about publishing, it's this: know your reader. Luckily, as a doctor of audiences at the University of Bristol, I've been able to think about this a lot!

So what does it mean to know your reader?