January 2009 - Writers Magazine

News Review

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  This week's News Review looks at book discounting, actually higher in the UK in 2008 than 2007 - and asks whether it's a danger or an opportunity.



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  So who are the most popular fiction writers across the globe? News Review looks at a new study which shows that Ken Follett and Khaled Hosseini feature in more bestseller lists than any other writers in the nine countries studied.



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  Children’s books are still doing well in spite of the recession. News Review looks at what's working and some publicly-funded UK programmes which are making a difference.



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  No-one could call 2008 an easy year. As well as an unprecedented worldwide credit crisis it has ended with an abrupt slide into a severe global recession, which will affect every country in the world and all aspects of life.  So what about the book business in 2009? News Review gets out its crystal ball.



• This week's News Review looks at the responsibility of publishers in the developed world to help the developing countries get books and access to them through Creative Commons and the work of the book charities.


• Newspapers' book review sections are under threat as part of the general pressure on the papers to keep their print editions going. But does this matter for books? News Review takes a look.

Comment

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  'Times Books as we know it will be no more, but books themselves, thankfully, seem shockproof against change.  Neither economics nor e-readers will oust the beloved book. We don't stop reading because we are poor, any more than book lovers will give up books for their electronic lookalikes.' Jeanette Winterson, in her final column in Times Books.



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  'Through today’s gloom we may discern a spectacularly bright future in which the rewards to writers and readers and even to publishers will be unprecedented as world-wide multilingual backlists expand online in a cultural revolution orders of magnitude greater than Gutenberg’s world-changing technology generated five centuries ago.’ Jason Epstein, author of Book Business



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  'The heart and soul of any publishing business is its editorial department, the men and women who, crudely, acquire the 'content' on which the imprint depends...  Gone are the days, with rare exceptions, when an editor's positive enthusiasm for a new book could trump the negative anxieties of the sales department, almost the only books that now generate much excitement among publishers are would-be bestsellers.  Robert McCrum in the Observer



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  Andrew MotionEnglish poet, novelist and biographer; Poet Laureate of United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009; during his laureateship founded the Poetry Archive, an online resource of poems and audio recordings of poets reading their own work, UK Poet Laureate on poetry: 'Sometimes rejoicing in things as they are, sometimes criticising them, sometimes welcoming, sometimes rejecting - always keeping its eyes peeled, its ears open, and its devotion to meaning as intense as its passion for mystery...  A primitive pleasure?  Absolutely.  But a primitive pleasure that is endlessly transformed and re-invented.

Writers' Quote

‘You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.’
C S Lewis

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