Storytel announces South Korea launch for 2019, along with Brazil, Germany and Singapore, leaving Thailand unconfirmed

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We’ve known since late 2018 that Sweden-based Storytel would be launching in at least five new markets this year, and now all but one are confirmed. Storytel Singapore launched in April, and is known to have a Brazil launch due any day and a Germany launch set for the summer. Storytel launches in Singapore. Adds Read More …

Amazon launches full language support for Traditional Chinese outside China, but is the 2007 Bezos vision of “every book ever printed, in any language, available in less than 60 seconds” still on the agenda?

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It was November 2014 when Amazon last launched a new Kindle store, almost seven years to the day from when the Kindle first launched in the US. Kindle Netherlands became the then latest in a seemingly unstoppable roll-out of Kindle stores across the globe and few could doubt that the Bezos doctrine of every book Read More …

Arabic folk tales get a second Manga outing. Jinn about to launch in 190 countries. As Arab storytelling goes global, when will publishers catch up with digital video?

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Manga has long since moved away from its homelands in the Far East, and we in the west tend to take for granted now that Manga is part of the international cultural scene. So the news from the Cannes Film Festival that Japan’s Toei Animation studio is working with other countries will come as no surprise. But Read More …

Storytel Russia’s first post-apocalypse original series commissioned for ten markets

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Metro 33 author Dmitry Glukhovsky has made headlines in Russia recently for penning his latest novel direct for audio – not a paperback in sight – to launch Storytel Russia’s Storytel Originals in the country. POST is set in a post-apocalypse Russia where the Trans-Siberian Railway links what’s left of a divided country.The only thread Read More …

Global Stats Snapshot: Mobile Data Consumption. When will publishers wake up and smell the coffee?

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When it comes to publishing, while everyone understands the value of data, few publishers look beyond their own industry data when making decisions. And that perhaps in part explains why publishing has been so slow to grasp the global digital opportunity. Because publishing is so busy looking at what happened yesterday, and making judgment calls Read More …

IPA and Dubai Cares sign MoU to support African publishing, committing $800k over four years

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Dubai Cares will be no stranger to those that follow global education initiatives. Part of the UAE’s Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives, Dubai Cares has benefitted over 18 million children and young people across 57 developing countries – 20 in Africa. Now comes news that Dubai Cares has pledged AED 2,938,800 (USD 800,000) Read More …

Cuba’s inaugural Havana Biennial of Poetry set for May 27

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Cuban poets will be joined be poets from 25 countries for the first Havana Biennial of Poetry, which will take place in the Martinez Villena room of UNEAC (Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba) on May 27. Alex Pausides, president of CubaPoesía, which is organizing the event, described the biennial as, a poetic action Read More …

In a bizarre twist in the Storytel-Bonnier dispute, both companies say they are winners and are earning more without the other

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It’s so counterintuitive it needs to be read twice, but in the battle between Sweden’s biggest streaming service, Storytel, and Sweden’s biggest publisher Bonnier, which also happens to own Sweden’s second biggest streaming outfit, Bookbeat, it seems both companies are making more money by having less content available. But is that the full story, is Read More …

Italy’s Turin International Book Fair sees another record year

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We hear it so often it’s easy to start believing it. People are reading less. Nobody is buying books. The publishing industry is doomed. Yet with a handful of exceptions the evidence – if we step outside the oh-so-twentieth-century notion that bookstores are the only barometer of interest in and revenue from books – is Read More …

Big Bad Wolf heads to Mandalay, taking its total to 2 million English-language books to Myanmar so far this year

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If we ever wanted a barometer of interest in English-language books in countries English-language publishers are indifferent to, we need look no further than Big Bad Wolf. From May 31 through June 10, with a preview day on May 30, Big Bad Wolf will be piling up one million English language books in Mandalay. Mandalay? Read More …

Is the Frankfurt Book Fair responsible for a 40% drop in Norwegian fiction sales in April?

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Denmark’s publishing industry journal BogMarketed has an interesting take on plummeting fictions sales in Norway. Amid suggestions from some quarters that audiobooks may be to blame for the collapse in fiction sales in Norway last month comes an improbable but not implausible explanation. New figures from the Publishers’ Association show an alarming decrease of 39% Read More …

North Macedonia’s Skopje International Book Fair passes unnoticed by outside world

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The 31st Skopje International Book Fair drew to a close this week, and information about the event remains scarce, but hopes were high that visitor numbers would exceed the record 45,000 that attended the 2018 edition. This year the 8-day event, somewhat overshadowed by the Thessaloniki International Book Fair in Greece and the Turin International Read More …

Storytel to gift its VAT bonus to publishers, quelling disquiet about royalties under the new pay per minute system

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When Jonas Tellander announced Storytel’s plan to moved from a fixed rate payout for publishers to a per-minute-consumed model there was understandable disquiet from publishers, many of whom believed the new model would see their revenue streams cut. And of course some did. Under the old model a one-hour podcast would earn as much for Read More …

Vkontakte, Russia’s answer to Facebook, prepares for audiobook subscription service launch

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Although it supports 89 languages, the social media platform VK is best known in its home country Russia, where you’re far more likely to find fellow Russians than on Facebook, and it is with Russian publishers that VK is working as it prepares to launch its audiobook subscription service. VK has 97 million monthly active Read More …

As mainstream publishing struggles in Latin America, book fair attendance and sales continue to rise. Colombia’s Bogota IBF sets new record with sales up 10% from 605,000 visitors

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Celebrating its bicentennial, Colombia this year had itself as guest of honour at the Bogota International Book Fair, and attracted 605,000 visitors, up from 575,000 last year and 550,000 in 2017. Sales are reported to be up 10% on 2018’s Bogota event. Last year 1.5 million Colombians bought 1.1 million books at national book fairs, Read More …

Brazil’s 14th Flipoços sets new records as mainstream booksellers continue to struggle. Are Brazilian readers voting with their feet?

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The contrast couldn’t be starker. On the one hand we have Nielsen and the National Syndicate of Book Publishers (SNEL) telling us bookstore sales are in freefall. On the other hand we have the Flipoços (the Poços de Caldas International Literary Festival) reporting not just record attendance but record sales. Again. Are Brazilian readers sending Read More …

At Thessaloniki International Book Fair StreetLib launches publishing portals across 32 Eurasian nations. Delivers keynote presentation on global digital book market opportunity

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StreetLib is the publisher behind The New Publishing Standard, and while TNPS is not a StreetLib promotional vehicle and we don’t routinely carry StreetLib news, StreetLib’s global expansion clearly falls within the TNPS global publishing industry news remit. Moreso on this occasion as the presentation StreetLib CEO Giacomo D’Angelo delivers at the Thessaloniki International Book Fair Read More …

Libranda values global Spanish-language ebook market at minimum $84 million (75 million euros)

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The latest report from ebook and audiobook distributor Libranda indicates global Spanish-language ebook sales up 10% YOY, with sales in Spain up 8% YOY in 2018. It is the ninth year in a row for rising digital sales in the Spanish-language markets, defined as Spain, Latin America and the USA. The figure for Spain, which Read More …

Bookwire MACS evolves into Bookwire OS – “the operating system for digital publishing”

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Germany’s Bookwire has launched its new operating system Bookwire OS across its core markets – Germany, UK, Spain and Latin America. Bookwire CEO Jens Klingelhöfer said, Bookwire OS offers a solution for all aspects of digital publishing of eBooks, audiobooks and print-on-demand products. In the coming months, we will launch new intelligent features for our Read More …

North America digital comics market worth upwards of $100 million in 2018. More when subscriptions factored in

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It’s anyone’s guess what the value of the global comics market is, but for North America the best valuation we have for 2018 is $1.095 billion, of which at least $100 million came in from digital. That’s according to ICv2, which reports the Kindle store leading sales for manga, and the second largest venue for Read More …