Amazon's latest figures are astounding and cement its dominance of the book business, particularly self-publishing, as well as the huge inroads it is making in many other areas. Read more
Coming from the tech arena is a fairly hostile view of traditional publishing, which assumes that it is dead and will shortly be totally replaced by indie publishing. But is this really what is happening at present? It doesn't seem so clear-cut. Read more
Amongst the predictions springing up as we move into the new year, a hard figure is the most astonishing. The slowing-down of ebook sales is well-documented but it is quite startling that the first figure of 2017 is that the UK print market sold 195 million books in 2016, an increase of almost 7% on 2015, and volume increased by 4.5%. Read more
The question of how to price ebooks is still of great concern to indie authors and to publishers alike, and recent research from Good e-Reader reveals that readers are prepared to pay disappointingly little. Over the last two months they asked 553 Americans how much they were prepared to pay for a new e-book and the results are sobering. Read more
So what can we say that's positive about the big changes in the situation for authors over the last few years? It's really a matter of the way writers now have the opportunity to get out there and shape their own destiny. Read more
There's been a lot of discussion recently about how things have changed for writers over the last few years. In some ways it's a radically different picture, in others not so much so. Read more
The growth in self-published books reported last week comes from Amazon, whose DIY print business CreateSpace has become far and away the biggest self-publishing platform in the United States. In a week when 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 reported major declines in sales of trade books, there's also been talk about whether depressed digital sales are hurting Amazon. Read more
Bowker has published a huge report on self-publishing in the US and, although the detailed figures are rather dry, some of the conclusions are quite explosive in their picture of a rapidly growing self-publishing scene. And where America goes, other countries tend to follow, although not at a uniform speed. Read more
There was a time when the main concern of writers coming to the site was how to find a publisher. That's when series such as Inside Publishing were created in order to answer the demand for information about publishing, so that writers could find out about what actually went on behind the scenes. Read more
The battle rages on about whether self-publishing or traditional publishing is best from the author's point of view and it all seems to come down to your own experience. If you're happily settled with a publisher and content with what they're doing for you, then of course you'll advocate that. Read more
The Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) has described Artificial Intelligence (AI) company Anthropic's alleged use of "pirated books" to train AI chatbot Claude as "egregious" and "typical of a wider trend."
‘You can offend somebody in the 21st century with something you said in 1970... By the end of the process I was questioning myself, that was the problem. I wrote innocently and I wrote to make people laugh but when I read the book through I thought, gosh, really, is this offensive? And that? And that? Am I all these things?
Index on Censorship said 53% of librarians polled had been asked to remove books - and that in more than half of those cases books were taken off shelves
One of the persistent themes to emerge from the ongoing nationwide surge in book banning is that the bans are being pursued by a vocal, politically motivated minority. Read more
The New Zealand author channelled her experience of tragedy and mental illness with dazzling results. Now centenary celebrations will ensure her extraordinary vision lives on
Writing and publishing a nonfiction book is a big investment-of time, energy, and often money. In our work with authors, we find that people often approach the process with passion and ambition but without any sense of what it really takes to get the attention of an agent or editor, especially in today's crowded market. That's why we've created these five ways to test your book idea. Read more
In a spirited five-day celebration, held August 8-12 at the Scottish Events Campus in Glasgow, Scotland, crowds converged from all over the globe for the 82nd World Science Fiction Convention, known as Worldcon. Show organizers said that more than 8,000 membership badges were purchased in total, with over 7,200 issued at the venue and upwards of 600 in attendance online.
'I'm always on the lookout for stories that are escapist and inclusive; that carve out a space for all readers. As an editor, ensuring representation for all in the truest and most authentic way is something I am always working towards'