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Amazon powers on with no profit in sight

11 February 2013

Amazon's fourth quarter results have just come in $1 billion (£632,62m) short of analysts' expectations, but because of a 55% increase in operating income to $405m (£256m), shares rose 6%.  Read more

Ebooks still on a roll

26 January 2012

The New Year has started with a mass of news from the ebook front, where things are really moving very fast. In the States ebook sales surged after Christmas. In the UK the figures show that more than one million ereaders and more than half a million tablet devices were received as gifts over Christmas, with Amazon and Apple the leading suppliers of e-readers and tablets respectively.  Read more

Publish your own ebook

18 July 2011

Do you want to find out how to publish your work as an ebook? This is something you may be thinking about, in view of the rapid growth in ebook sales. Many authors are suffering from a big contraction in their earnings.  Read more

Romance - perfect on e-reader

10 January 2011

Amazon Kindle sales in the US and UK last year were eight million, making it their biggest selling product ever. An article in the UK's Daily Mail put this down to 'spinsters' buying romance to read on their Kindles (and other e-readers) because they were too embarrassed to be seen reading romances in pubic in book form because of the covers.  Read more

Would you buy an e-reader?

7 June 2010

The excitement surrounding the arrival of the i-Pad in countries outside the US has caught the attention of the media, reinforcing the idea that a mass audience is waiting to buy one and start using it to read e-books. The arrival of the Kindle aroused similar expectations and many articles presaging the end of the printed book.  Read more

Battle of the titans

1 February 2010

This has been one of those weeks when there’s been so much happening that it’s difficult to cover it in a single column. Apple has broken the news of its iPad and, amidst the focus on that, Amazon has already started to fight back. This could be a turning-point and how publishing, books and authors come out of all this is hard to predict.  Read more

Is this a revival of the short story?

14 December 2009

Is it possible that the short story is at last getting a new lease of life? The form, long beloved of writers, seems to be reaching new audiences through the Internet and benefiting from new opportunities in the form of prizes.   Read more

The Kindle goes global

11 October 2009

This was the week when, in the middle of an unsurprising Booker and an unremarkable Nobel Prize for Literature, Amazon launched its much-heralded Kindle 2 international edition.   Read more

Ebooks - still a hot topic

20 July 2009

Since News Review last reported on e-books and e-book readers in the spring (News Review 2 March) what's happened to the 'big story' of the book world? Well, everyone's been pretty preoccupied with what else is going on right now, with all eyes on the developing recession and how this is affecting booksellers and publishers.  Read more

Does the new Kindle herald the end of the book?

2 March 2009

It may seem like old news now, but News Review has been on holiday so it seems worth tracking back to Amazon's announcement of its new version of the Kindle (see News Review 2 February), which became available last week, only in the US, although wider release is expected to follow soon.  Read more

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The Selfies Book Awards UK 2023

Information

Closing date: 
3 January 2023
Entry: 
Authors who have self-published adult fiction, children’s books or adult memoirs/autobiography in the UK between January and December 2022. Entry fee: £35 per title to include a six-month subscription to Bookbrunch
Prize: 
£750 cash prize for each category plus other prizes

For the fifth year running the hugely popular Selfies Book Awards - powered by UK trade journal BookBrunch and sponsored by Ingram Spark® - will again reward three self-published authors for their publishing excellence. Submissions are now open for indie authors who have published an adult autobiography/memoir, adult fiction or children's book during 2022.
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'Writing is a strange synthesis between the two parts of your mind: the analytical side and the side that knows nothing at all, and you have to allow the dreaming side free rein.'

— Rose Tremain

Worldbuilding 2: the basics of writing fantasy fiction

Sun, 04/12/2022 - 2:30pm
The basics of writing fantasy fiction

Fantasy fiction is a niche market, but a very popular niche market. It is particularly popular among new writers, and I suspect this is a consequence of growing up on a diet of best-selling fantasy fiction over the last couple of decades. In this article, I will look at the differences between writing fantasy fiction and other genres, and also the similarities.  Read more

Worldbuilding 1: Character names in fantasy novels

Mon, 21/11/2022 - 6:34pm
Character names in fantasy novels

One of the more rewarding - and difficult - things about writing a fantasy novel is having the opportunity to create and describe a world different from our own; one where magic is real, where non-human beings interact with us, and where reality has a shape and texture that is anything but mundane.  Read more

21 November 2022 - What's new

November 2022
  • ‘The TikTok success stories of Colleen Hoover and Emily Henry have done the genre a wonderful favour by putting romance firmly in a spotlight so bright that their popularity cannot be ignored...
  Read more