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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
'The creative process is open to all. I don't believe in some magical creative gift, the exclusive possession of a few, nor need it concern big or sophisticated ideas. On the contrary, creativity may depend upon the recognition that our own thoughts and ideas are as valid as anyone else's; something which we knew as children, and which we were taught to unlearn. Read more
Open to unpublished and unagented writers from around the world.
No entry fee
Prize:
Prize of £3,000; publication with Tortoise Media; literary representation by RCW literary agent Laurence Laluyaux and other prizes
Fern Press and How to Academy have partnered on a new essay award worth £3,000, in association with Tortoise Media, for unpublished authors.
Fern Press was launched by Vintage last year, while the annual non-fiction essay prize is "for those working at the frontier of creativity and thought", organisers said. Read more
It's not a pretty word, 'blurb'; it smacks of nonsense, or slightly less than entirely honest marketing. Which is unfortunate, because a blurb is a useful and necessary thing; without it, your book is at risk of being a blank text, what you might call a closed book. Read more
'You want to write the twist so that it doesn't suddenly come out of nowhere. I tried to see a few things so that (the reader) thinks, of course! But it is hard to get that balance I think, of trying to get a twist in that is unguessable but not too "out there"... Writing in lockdown, 'So that was a bit of freedom in a way, I didn't have any expectations almost.
'You want to write the twist so that it doesn't suddenly come out of nowhere. I tried to see a few things so that (the reader) thinks, of course! But it is hard to get that balance I think, of trying to get a twist in that is unguessable but not too "out there". Read more
Waterstones managing director James Daunt said social media is reinforcing the reading of "proper" paper books among young people.
Mr Daunt, who is also chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said social media trends such as 'BookTok' on TikTok had been "hugely positive", as he was made a CBE for his services to publishing by the Princess Royal.
A new generation of romance novel consumers has moved a long-standing three-way conversation between reader, writer and publisher onto social media, industry insiders say, speeding up an already fast-moving segment of the publishing world.
When you are next visiting a bookstore, and find your way to the children's section, you might be forgiven for thinking that there is no longer such a thing as a children's author. Instead, you will be ambushed by piles of books blazoned with the names of actors, singers, comedians, DJs and people who generously exhibit themselves on social media.
A federal judge in California this week dismissed four of six claims made by authors in a now consolidated lawsuit alleging that Open AI infringes their copyrights. But the court gave the authors a month to amend their complaint, and the suit's core claim of direct infringement-which Open AI did not seek to dismiss-remains active.
For budding authors, the submissions process can be daunting. For anyone with little understanding of the publishing industry and how it works, it can be even more so. And for anyone whose writing sits outside of the established ideas of genre, style or content, it can be utterly baffling as to how to present that to an agent or publisher.
‘Books say: she did this because life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people's lives, never your own,'
Children's creativity
'The creative process is open to all. I don't believe in some magical creative gift, the exclusive possession of a few, nor need it concern big or sophisticated ideas. On the contrary, creativity may depend upon the recognition that our own thoughts and ideas are as valid as anyone else's; something which we knew as children, and which we were taught to unlearn. Read more