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22 December 2014 - What's new

22 December 2014
  • 'It's been a pretty good year for publishers. Bertelsmann revenues were the highest for seven years, although admittedly its profits were down and the acquisition of Penguin is part of the mix. But children's and YA publishing is the driver of growth. American figures show that this year will be the best-ever for kids' books, with publishers paying more and more attention to this market. In the US ebook sales of children's books have boomed by an extraordinary 52.7%...' News Review
  • Our article on Working with an agent gives a useful introduction to what you get out of it and how to handle it.
  • 'I've always been interested in those painful moments between people which can't be fully articulated, and even if they were fully articulated might become even more unbearable. There's no way out. Nor do I think in situations like that there's that horrible American word 'closure'. Because for all the sexual liberation, the great social changes through the 60s and 70s, one meets loads of people who seem to have been married for ever...' Ian McEwan, talking about The Children Act in the Sunday Times magazine, quoted in our Comment column.
  • Are you a fan of quotes? Our pages on More Writers' quotes and Even More Quotes take you back through our wonderful selection.
  • Our links of the week: a thoughtful view, Amazon Not as Unstoppable as It Might Appear - NYTimes.com; a positive approach to the possibilities of libraries, which are essential throughout the world, Flexible and digitised, our libraries have a bright future - Telegraph; an update from the Children's Book Summit in New York, Forget Your Preconceptions About Teenagers and Reading; and a useful corrective view on the importance of websites, Why Book Marketing (Still) Starts and Ends with the Website | Digital Book World.
  • 'That's the essential goal of the writer: you slice out a piece of yourself and slap it down on the desk in front of you. You try to put it on paper, try to describe it in a way that the reader can see and feel and touch. You paste all your nerve endings into it and then give it out to strangers who don't know you or understand you.' Stephen Leigh in our Writers' Quotes.
  • Season's greetings!