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News stories from the book world in January 2018

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Publishers and authors work together on children's reading initiative

10 December 2018

In an interesting initiative involving the London-based Hachette Children's Group (HCG), sister company Orion and 22 of their authors, they have worked together to run advertisements in their books encouraging readers to share the love of reading with children. The advertisements will run next year in more than 400,000 of their books.  Read more

Beijing International Book Fair 'substantial rights deals and significant orders'

20 August 2018

For the first time, British publishers will form the biggest contingent at the upcoming Beijing International Book Fair. There will be 33 companies on the collective stand and 56 firms in all represented at the Fair, reports the Bookseller.  Read more

Amazon's sensational growth

30 July 2018

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

Waterstones sale good for writers

30 April 2018

The sale of Waterstones to activist hedge fund Elliott Advisers has been widely welcomed in the book trade and is very much in the interests of writers. Like Barnes & Noble in the US, the British bookstore chain occupies a key position in terms of chain bookselling.  Read more

Poetry sales boom

16 April 2018

There's good news in Bookbrunch about poetry sales coming from the UK, the market is up two-thirds since 2012. A 66% increase in poetry sales over the past five years has led to a million poetry books being sold with a total value of £1.1m. There has been a boom in poetry events and festivals, with increased interest in the work of living poets with strong online followings.  Read more

London Book Fair buoyant

9 April 2018

This week's London Book Fair has been a buzzy and optimistic occasion, as publishers from around the world gathered to sell rights to the international market. Second only to the Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two., the LBF punches above its weight in terms of its usefulness to publishers.  Read more

Another buoyant Bologna Book Fair

26 March 2018

The Bologna Children's Book FairThe Bologna Children's Book Fair or La fiera del libro per ragazzi is the leading professional fair for children's books in the world. seems to have been a liveley occasion as usual, with considerable interest in Middle Grade fiction and some reviving interest in YA too. Picture books are still difficult but there is interest in talented new writers and illustrators. Bonnier's decision to close down its Australian children's publishing arm was a real shock.  Read more

Daunt on bookselling

19 March 2018

It's unusual to find a book chain boss who went into bookselling because he liked reading, but James Daunt, founder of Daunts bookshop chain in London, and CEO of the Waterstones chain in the UK, is that rare animal. Encouragingly, he still maintains that: 'Books still work and always will'.  Read more

Audiobooks seize market share

12 March 2018

At this week's conference of the Independent Publishers' Guild, Jo Forshaw talked about the way in which the audio market is opening up, beginning to provide a challenge to ebooks.  Read more

Ebooks 'completely changed my life'

26 February 2018

Hachette CEO Arnaud Nourry has courted controversy by declaring that the ebook ‘is a stupid product', countered by Chris Meadows in Teleread saying that ebooks are pretty much the same thing as print books and also that the ebook makes up one-fifth of publishers' sales (9 out of 10 self-publishers' sales).  Read more

Harry Potter - 500 million copies!

12 February 2018

Last week's Harry Potter Book Day led Bloomsbury to release some amazing figures for the series, which have now exceeded 500 million copies sold worldwide. The figures take into account sales across all versions of the seven books in the series, which began with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 1997, as well as three companion volumes.  Read more

Short stories finding a market

15 January 2018

A story in the Bookseller, unfortunately behind the paywall, has provided encouragement for short story writers this week. Short story collections have sold 692,087 units or £5.88m in value in the UK during 2017. This is up 32% by volume and 45% by value over 2016.  Read more