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'A pretty good year for publishers'

29 December 2014

It's been a pretty good year for publishers. Bertelsmann revenues were the highest for seven years, although admittedly its profits were down and the acquisition of Penguin is part of the mix.  Read more

Unknown British author tops US bestseller list with erotic novel

19 March 2012

It's a sign of the times that previously unknown British author E L James has topped the New York Times bestseller list with an erotic romance, Fifty Shades of Grey.  Read more

Advantage: new authors

5 March 2012

This week's there's an interesting story from the US about writer Kate Alcott, whose first novel The Dressmaker has just sold 35,000 copies in hardback and been sold for translation in five countries. It seems explicable in terms of the subject-matter because The Dressmaker is about a seamstress who goes on board the Titanic as a lady's maid, is wooed by two men from  Read more

Explosion in titles published in the USA

8 March 2010

The staggering number of 285,000 new titles and editions were self-published and published by community presses in the US last year, balanced against a slightly lower figure of 275,000 coming from traditional publishing houses.  Read more

2009's troubled times continue in the US

11 January 2010

So how does the world look as we venture forth into the new decade? This week we'll look at the US and next week at the UK publishing worlds in an attempt to assess how the turmoil in the book trade is affecting writers.

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'How many more BEAs?'

1 June 2009

This weekend the Javits Center in New York has been thronged with the thousands of people attending BookExpo, the biggest annual book show in North America. It's clear from the coverage that a mass of interesting author events and the usual promotional round are making this BookExpo seem as busy as ever, and attendance figures are only slightly down.  Read more

Recession and the book trade

16 March 2009

How is the economic slowdown affecting books? We've managed to stay off the subject of the recession for over two months, so now is the time to have another look at how it is affecting the book business.   Read more

The latest despatch from the Turf Wars

9 June 2008

No sooner had the dust settled on Bertlesmann's surprise appointment of German print supremo Markus Dohle to succeed Peter Olson as CEO of Random House US, than another unexpected change hit the American publishing world. Jane Friedman, the successful and popular head of HarperCollins, also announced her immediate departure.  Read more

Striking writers win

11 February 2008

In News Review of 5 November we noted the beginning of the Writers' Guild strike in the US. Since then there have been occasional stories in the media about tv companies being forced to put out a diet of reruns and American audiences deserting their tv screens.  Read more

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22 May 2023 - What's new

May 2023
  • 'For God's sake, never use a metaphor and then explain it... You can assume a world from so little and readers will.
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'Never use a metaphor and then explain it'

22 May 2023

'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