Authors, publicists, editors and booksellers have described their relationship with X (formerly Twitter) as an "unhappy marriage". The "hostile and deeply unpleasant" discourse and the shrinking levels of engagement have been blamed for many leaving the platform in recent months, with one publisher already announcing it would be "pausing all activity" on X.
Links of the week September 30 2024 (40)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
7 October 2024
A spokesperson for Pan MacmillanOne of largest fiction and non-fiction book publishers in UK; includes imprints of Pan, Picador and Macmillan Children’s Books told The Bookseller: "As a result of concerns around the future direction of X and following our decision to suspend advertising at the beginning of the year, we are pausing all activity on the platform. Disinformation
Alternative American news and underground culture site with a liberal perspective, which describes itself as 'the search service of choice for individuals looking for information on current affairs. politics, new science' and "hidden information". www.disinfo.com
, misinformation and hate speech continue to spread on X with little or no interruption and we expect the recently confirmed changes to the platform's block feature will further undermine the well-being and safety of users."Although Pan Mac has announced its departure, publisher Bloomsbury told The Bookseller it would be staying. Jack Birch, Bloomsbury's senior digital marketing manager, said: "There is much press about dwindling user numbers for X/Twitter, but it remains the platform where influential media figures (journalists, celebrities) continue to post, and where important news breaks first. We therefore still view the platform as the primary text-based social network."
Government statistics suggest the number of US publishing jobs has declined dramatically since the 1990s
After a year when publishing industry layoffs have frequently been in the headlines, it will surprise no one that the total number of jobs in the industry is in decline. But in an era marked by corporate consolidation, increased competition for consumer attention, and the emergence of alternative publishing models, the most recent government data suggests the loss of publishing jobs over the past three decades has been dramatic.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of people employed in book publishing in the United States fell to 54,822 in 2023, down from 91,100 in 1997. If accurate, that represents a loss of about 40% of traditional publishing jobs in less than 30 years.
Two independent book publishers were recently absorbed by larger companies. This doesn't bode well for the health of our literary culture.
In September, Hardie Grant, an independent stalwart of the Australian publishing scene, announced the acquisition of Pantera Press, a smaller independent publisher, with an eclectic list dominated by genre fiction and commercial non-fiction. This followed the news in August that Affirm Press, an indie publisher with a huge list, had been acquired by a really big fish, Simon & Schuster (S&S).
The corporate press releases were hardly Bruegelian. Pantera declared it shared with Hardie Grant "a strong alignment in ... missions and values - committed to fostering creativity, supporting authors, and publishing with purpose". The S&S presser was studded with optimistic quotes from CEOs and managing directors: everyone is thrilled, delighted, proud and excited.
Affirm Press' Martin Hughes (Image: Zennie/Private Media)
‘One word: Cashflow' - Simon & Schuster swallows independent publisher Affirm
Read MoreOver the past decade or so, suspicion of corporate publishing acquisitions in Australia has been conditioned by major anti-trust proceedings in the United States, most recently in the Department of Justice's successful challenge to the merger of Penguin Random House (PRH) and Simon & Schuster.
Independent booksellers Topping & Company will open a new bookshop over multiple floors in central York in autumn 2025.
At just under 6,000 square feet, it is set to become "the largest independent bookshop in the country".
It becomes the fifth bookshop for Topping & Company, which in 2021 relocated the Bath bookshop to the Georgian building in York Street, and in 2019 opened the Edinburgh bookshop in a Grade A-listed William Playfair building. The St Andrews bookshop has also recently doubled in size, while the Ely bookshop celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2022. The new home for Topping & Company is a "historic building - dating back to 1860, on the corner of Museum Street and Blake Street, with "spectacular views of the west front of York Minster" from the first floor.
Kellingly tells BookBrunch about Bloomsbury's new range of dyslexia-friendly books, and the importance of accessibility in publishing
Elizabeth Kellingly worked with backlist manager Duncan Honeyman and editorial assistant Gurdip Ahluwalia to create Bloomsbury's first dyslexia-friendly books for adults. The list includes titles by Kiley Reid and Madeline Miller and goes live on 31 October. It has already had to double its print run due to high demand.
Could you tell us about the process of creating Bloomsbury's first dyslexia friendly books for adults?
The process started with my involvement in a group about ebook accessibility, linked to the upcoming deadline of the European Accessibility Act. At that time I worked in the academic production team, and thought that if we were making our ebooks more accessible, why not our print books too? It%u2019s amazing that dyslexic readers have the option of e-readers, but sometimes people just want to be able to read a physical copy of their favourite book. To create the books, a huge amount of time was spent researching the best methods of making the books, taking into account guidelines for dyslexic readers, budget and printer options.
Heidi Kingstone on writing about the darkest episodes of the 20th and 21st centuries
So much in life is down to serendipity, not least my career in journalism and my latest book, Genocide: Personal Stories, Big Questions. But part of serendipity is also knowing when to seize the opportunity.
I fell into journalism when an editor I had gone to see about something entirely different asked me to write a story, and I knew I had found my vocation. Many years later, just before Covid-19 struck in 2020, I was back in my native Toronto.
There, I met Paulette Volgyesi, who was born in Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp liberated by the British in 1945 and then burned down to stop the spread of the many rampant diseases. The former survivors were rehoused a mile down the road in a displaced persons camp, where Paulette was born in 1948. Seven decades after she moved to Canada in 1950, Paulette was teaching English to Yazidi survivors of ISIS who had also found refuge in Ontario. I liked that arc and wrote a story. It's what I've always loved about journalism: you start a story but you never know where it is going to take you. In this case, it was 20th and 21st-century genocide.
A New Zealand author is "pinching" herself after a UK bidding war over her novel.
Catherine Chidgey's dystopian ninth novel The Book of Guilt is a "sinisterly skewed version" of the UK in 1979. The story follows 13-year-old triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William, who are the last remaining residents of a home that's part of the government's 'Sycamore Scheme'.
The best-selling, award-winning author has been with her New Zealand publisher Te Herenga Waka University Press since her first novel came in in 1998, she told RNZ's Nights. While her books have been published by a variety of UK houses too, her London agent sent The Book of Guilt to a select list of editors, Chidgey said.
Multiple offers subsequently came in so her agent accepted one as a "floor offer".
The One Show invitation has yet to arrive - Nick Duerden on life as a midlist author
In a recent edition of the popular podcast The Rest Is Entertainment, hosts Marina Hyde and Richard Osman discussed the latter's latest book, We Solve Murders, and what publication week was like for the king of cosy crime. Osman, who is as genial inside a pair of Airpods as he is upon the page, talked enthusiastically about appearing on The One Show, and across a variety of other radio and television programmes. He mentioned how effective it could be for book sales also to pop up on local TV news stations, and shared just how much he was looking forward to touring the nation's bookshops, where he'd meet his unfailingly eager readers.
A few weeks before his book came out, and a full month before Sally Rooney's mighty Intermezzo, I had my own published, a memoir entitled People Who Like Dogs Like People Who Like Dogs. On the day of release, I was lucky enough to have been invited to a lovely independent bookshop in Sevenoaks, where I spoke before an almost packed house: of the 12 seats available, 10 were taken. When I got home that night - three trains and a bus; it took ages - I made my daughters' dinner while the television gurgled in the background. The One Show was on, but I wasn't one of its guests. Neither had I made it on to radio, nor any of my local TV news stations.
Jacquie Walters on children, hopelessness, and discovering horror fiction.
In the weeks after having my first child, I found myself dipping in and out of a very dark place.
Article continues after advertisementAround six o'clock every evening, I'd cry-my body heaving-thinking about the long night ahead. The midnight spell when I would feel more alone than I'd ever felt in my entire life. Somehow each hour of the night managed to stretch long beyond its allotted sixty minutes. Hopelessness enshrouded me like fog.
It was in one of these dips, during one of my many spelunking missions into some rabbit hole of doom, that I fell in love with the horror genre.
Five years ago, I never would have believed that my own debut novel would be a horror. And yet, here we are-Dearest published just last week-and I'm hoping to continue writing in the genre for years to come. Because the horror world is not only illuminating but also intoxicating.
Author Katherine Rundell and Claire Wilson, president of the Association of Authors' AgentsThe association of UK agents. Their website (http://www.agentsassoc.co.uk/index.html) gives a Directory of Members and a code of practice, but no information about the agencies other than their names. The association refers visitors to the UK agent listings from The Writers' & Artists' Yearbook on the WritersServices site. (AAA), have signed the open letter launched by the book industry, calling on the Prime Minister to address the decline in reading for pleasure among children.
The letter was introduced by Bloombsury children's books publishing director Rebecca McNally during her keynote speech at The Bookseller's Children's Conference. It has been signed by publishers, editors, agents and authors, including Rundell, who said that if "we cut children off from reading, we are a generation of thieves".
The author of Impossible Creatures (Bloomsbury Children's Books) urged the government to "pay attention to the urgent needs of children" and "mandate funding for libraries in every primary school in England".
Rundell added: "If we don't do everything we can to put books in children's hands, we steal from them access to the great record of the very best of mankind-because it's in books that we have put down our best jokes, our most radical ideas, our most complex and nuanced visions of the future. We need a government that will [...] show they believe, truly, in the rights of our children to access the joy, and the sense of autonomy and possibility, that comes with reading."
The book industry has launched an open letter calling on the government to create a plan to boost reading for pleasure for children across the UK. The letter invited the Prime Minister "to make a cross-government commitment to prioritise the role of reading for pleasure for children", investing in the development of children and the future of the country.
In her keynote speech at The Bookseller's Children's Conference, Bloomsbury children's books publishing director Rebecca McNally asked the audience to support the "campaign to prioritise reading for pleasure - and to ensure that access to the benefits of books and reading doesn't become the exclusive preserve of the privileged".
McNally spoke about the decline in reading for pleasure and the risk of "losing a generation of readers", despite the known benefits that reading brings to the lives of children. The publishing director explained that "reading for pleasure [is] at an all-time low" among children, with 800 libraries closing and library budgets being cut 53% in the past 14 years.
"One in seven primary schools doesn't have a dedicated library space," she said. Children from underprivileged backgrounds who might not have access to books at home are disproportionally impacted by the lack of libraries, she said, while McNally explained that "more than a third of children on free school meals leave primary school without reaching the expected level of reading".
A decline in reading is affecting young people's ability to reason, and teachers are contributing to the problem
Kids aren't reading anymore. That's the conclusion of a recent article by The Associated Press noting that children are not only reading less for fun - only 14% say they do so daily compared to 27% in 2012 - but they are also not getting assigned actual books much in class either.
Per the AP, "In many English classrooms across America, assignments to read full-length novels are becoming less common. Some teachers focus instead on selected passages - a concession to perceptions of shorter attention spans, pressure to prepare for standardized tests and a sense that short-form content will prepare students for the modern, digital world." (The idea that students who don't read entire books perform better on standardized tests is complete nonsense, as evidenced by the astronomical test scores of schools like Success Academies.)
Teachers are not just reacting to the problem. They are also causing it. In 2022, the National Council of Teachers of English issued a statement saying: "The time has come to decenter book reading and essay-writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education."
A report has found that more than half of children's books published in the last decade with a minoritised ethnic main character were by white authors and illustrators.
The Inclusive Books for Children Excluded Voices report identified 568 books that were traditionally published in the UK from 2014 to 2023 for children under 10, containing main characters from minority ethnicities or who were disabled or neurodivergent. The report sought to establish the number of authors who share the same identity as the characters they write about (ie "Own Voices").
Of the minoritised ethnic main characters in these books, the majority (78.3%) were Black, or ambiguously Black or brown, and 53% of those were by white authors and illustrators. Of the 142 picture book stories with a Black main character published over the decade, 45% were by a Black-British creator.
The report found that representation of other ethnicities was "relatively scarce". Just 24 and 25 picture book stories respectively were found to feature South Asian or East or Southeast Asian main characters over the publishing decade under scrutiny.
It also found that picture book stories with an ambiguously Black or brown main character were dominated by white authors and illustrators, who contributed 83.3% of such books.
Lizza Aiken on the Responsibility of Maintaining Her Mother's Literary Legacy
The greatest piece of good fortune in my life was to be born the daughter of the writer Joan Aiken. As a child I took it for granted that there would always be another story to cheer me along on a rainy walk, or an imaginative solution to a thorny problem, or a wonderful companion to share (and sometimes steal!) my own stories and adventures, and finally someone who would give me the best job in the world, for life.
Writing had been the family trade for more than three generations, from Unitarian minister William James Potter down to Joan's father, poet Conrad Aiken, but I never thought it would be mine. I was a reader, a listener and had my own ideas about telling stories; I went off to train as a mime in Amsterdam and Paris, perhaps the equivalent of running away to join the circus, and spent many years working in theatre and travelling between International Drama Festivals, where language was not a barrier.
Through all this time I have come to realize the real and lasting value of some of the classic books I have been given to look after.