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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
This post is just a reminder to authors and publishers that, unlike in the US and UK where foreign language titles, if available at all, are shunted away in a dark corner, foreign-language books are in demand around the world. We should take care not lose sight of the international marketing opportunities when we distribute Read More …
The 19th Nigeria International Book Fair got underway today. I’ll report on the event further as news comes in. Here to briefly look at a pre-launch call for the establishment of a Nigerian Book Commission to help guide the industry in a period of transition and challenges. Challenges? Everything from piracy to distribution to rising Read More …
Italy-based digital books distributor and publishing facilitator StreetLib has partnered with Paris-based IP platform Nakiri to offer authors and publishers deals in the global Francophone markets Full disclosure: The New Publishing Standard (TNPS) is published by StreetLib to further the debate about the global book markets. TNPS is not a StreetLib promotion tool. We offer news, data and Read More …
Back at the Cairo International Book Fair earlier this year Storytel announced its plans to launch the Harry Potter books in Arabic as audiobooks, and the first audiobook is now available to download. It’s a huge boost for Storytel Arabia and likely to bring to the platform a lot of new subscribers. A press release Read More …
Global publishing is a holistic affair and increasingly tech-driven at every level. The news that Google is opening an AI research facility in the Ghanaian capital Accra, reported to be the first of its kind in Africa, is at first glance not much to do with publishing, but that’s to miss the bigger picture here Read More …
Start The Day Global – a round-up of some of the myriad international publishing stories that there isn’t time to develop in full, or that have been well-covered by other industry journals and warrant a referral here. We start the day global today in Libya, perhaps one of the less frequent countries to pop up Read More …
The 29th Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, which runs April 24-30 this year, has had to turn away over 100 publishers this year as demand massively exceeded available space at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre. This despite fierce competition from the annual Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival and the once in a lifetime celebrations as Sharjah becomes Read More …
With the International Publishers Association’s second African Seminar just two months away, TNPS is taking a close look at the many opportunities unfolding across this vast continent with a series of short posts and studies. Today it’s the turn of a small Nigerian publishing house start-up in Lagos, Clever Clogs Books, that despite only having Read More …
They say a picture is worth a thousand worlds, and what says it better than this image from the Sharjah World Book Capital twitter account today. ( @SharjahWBC ). The Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival typically draws a crowd of around 300,000. NB By the time you see this it will be 5 days, or 4 Read More …
Organised by the Nigeria Book Fair Trust, the 18th Nigerian International Book Fair in Lagos will run for six days from 6 May. The dates have been up on the book fair’s Facebook and twitter accounts for a while now but this week the event was formally announced by Gbadega Adedapo, Chairman of the Nigerian Read More …
Starting April 24 and running through until May 4, the 32nd Tehran International Book Fair has China as guest of honour this year, and as usual the event promises to be spectacular, with around 2 million visitors piling in. Last year’s incarnation brought in sales worth the USD equivalent of $38 million, but despite this Read More …
If it’s 2019, it must be time for the bi-annual Bókmenntahátíð í Reykjavík which this year has a spring date for the first time. That will be April 24-27 for those who fancy a spring break in Iceland. Don’t worry if you flunked Icelandic at school. Bókmenntahátíð í Reykjavík is of course the Reykjavík International Read More …
