Category: publishing

“It used to be the rare judge who would go for rim shots from the bench. But these days, the bench is a veritable yuk-fest, with judges increasingly peppering opinions – usually a tedious slog through arcane facts and law – with puns, rhymes, attempts at humor and cultural references, lawyers and court watchers say.”

“It’s no idle boast that it has become one of the largest events of its kind in Asia – and a rival to the likes of the massive Kolkata Book Fair in India in terms of attendance and the Frankfurt Book Fair in terms of books featured.”

“Membership is up, audiences are up and the society has been one of the big winners from Arts Council England’s most recent round of funding, with grants increased 30% to £360,000. But after a month which has seen the society’s president Jo Shapcott, its director Judith Palmer, and its financial officer Paul Ranford, all hand in their resignations, some members are demanding that the society’s board be called to account.”

What seems to be happening is that Amazon’s platform is being overwhelmed by spammers who “scrape” content from websites or, in some cases, actually lift entire texts, and republish them as ebooks. And, in a neat twist, each of these ersatz “books” can be marketed under several different titles as coming from different authors.

“Before this year, there had been only two significant class action suits against major publishers, both of which were settled. Since January, however, both Simon & Schuster and Penguin Group have found themselves staring down the barrels of class action litigation.”

“The book – the physical paper book – is being circled by a shoal of sharks, with sales down 9 per cent this year alone. It’s being chewed by the e-book. It’s being gored by the death of the bookshop and the library. And most importantly, the mental space it occupied is being eroded by the thousand Weapons of Mass Distraction that surround us all.”

“Many of the highest-profile events at the Edinburgh book festival sold out on the first day of full ticket sales after an unprecedented surge in demand caused chaos for its online booking service.”

“The National Society of Newspaper Columnists has weighed in on the question of what it considers the finest example of its craft.” (Well, in a US paper, evidently.) And no, Virginia, the winner is not about Santa Claus.

“Once again, JK Rowling and her marketing team have left the rest of the publishing world standing while she blazes a trail into the record books. I’ll eat my hardback copy of The Deathly Hallows if the Harry Potters aren’t the fastest-selling ebooks in history by the end of this year – and I can only tip my hat in admiration.”

With Bowker reporting an “explosive growth” of 169% last month in “non-traditional” publishing, it’s not just vanity projects that are taking the self-publishing route these days.