Skip to Content

Reading tastes

The power of reading

8 February 2016

According to a study funded by the Quick Reads sponsor Galaxy, 27% of the British population have been inspired by a book to make ‘positive life changes' and 41% of regular readers regard the habit as a better antidote to stress than meeting friends.  Read more

Books and consumers research shows rapid change

9 April 2012

The annual Books & Consumers research into the British book market was delivered to a highly interested audience last week. Rarely can there have been so much change in one year and the assembled bookseller and publishers were keen to hear what had actually been going on.  Read more

Older writers turn to memoir

24 October 2011

There is an increasing trend for older people to write their own memoir and then to self-publish it, sometimes in a nice gift edition.  Read more

'Women's fiction'

5 September 2011

Following an appeal by two female customers from Tonbridge in the English county of Kent, the bookseller W H Smith has agreed to remove all references to 'women's fiction' in its shops from October. The two women, Clare Leigh and Julia Gillick, complained that the women's fiction section was 'very light, with lots of pink fluffiness' and there were no classic authors.  Read more

Writers in translation hit the headlines

31 May 2010

Stieg Larsson notwithstanding, what are the chances of a translated author selling well in the big English-speaking markets of the US and the UK? The received wisdom has always been that translations into English are tough going financially, with it proving virtually impossible to make the figures work without an English-language publisher on both sides of the Atlantic to pay for the cos  Read more

UK versus US readers

26 October 2009

A recent study from Book Marketing Limited, which runs the Books & Consumers survey, and Bowker, which runs the US equivalent, PubTrack, has highlighted some interesting differences between British and American readers.   Read more

Romance - a rave for readers

17 August 2009

The romance genre is doing very nicely, thank you, in spite of the recession. When conglomerate publishers such as HarperCollins and Simon and Schuster have been announcing sharp downturns in sales (see last week's News Review ), Harlequin/Mills & Boon (the US and UK companies respectively) just go from strength to strength.   Read more

US book-buyers are getting older

22 June 2009

Two-thirds of book-buyers in the US are 43 and older. This stark statistic was revealed in the recent Book Industry Study Group study. Book sales in the US are flat, with sales expected to stagnate for at least another year.   Read more

132% increase in US print on demand

25 May 2009

Astonishing new figures just released by Bowker in the States show that US book production declined by 3% in 2008 but print on demand publishing almost doubled. This means that a staggering 275,232 new titles and new editions were published, but this figure is actually down from the 284,370 that were published in 2007.   Read more

'This wonderful tool for self-knowledge'

22 December 2008

'This wonderful tool for self-knowledge'  Read more

Syndicate content