This past week on TNPS: Sales down but visitors up at Brazil’s Porto Alegre Book Fair. The world’s untracked book sales redux. The Handmaid’s Tale released in UAE as Arab book market globalisation builds. Bangladesh Book Fair in Kolkata sets the scene for Kolkata IBF and the Amar Ekushey Boi Mela. Read More …
While the Big 5 western ebook retailers look the other way, the digital format continues to gain ground across south and south-east Asia, driven by mobile. Next year Storytel will launch in Singapore, while Thailand’s Ookbee has long had a strong presence across SE Asia. Yet bizarrely neither Amazon nor Apple offer ebooks in any part Read More …
If the Scribd-New York Times subscription bundle made the headlines in the Anglophone world, it is Bookbeat’s deal with Dagen Nyheter that is the big news in Scandinavia. Bookbeat, second player to Storytel in the Nordic audiobook and ebook subscription stakes, has signed a deal with the Swedish digital news service (Dagens Nyheter = Today’s Read More …
Denmark’s digital library service Ereolen has seen the number of ebook titles in its catalogue soar from 18,000 in September 2017 to 29,000 in September 2018. The 65% boost is due to Denmark’s biggest publishers embracing the option rather than lose ground to audiobook and ebook subscription services like Storytel. Denmark’s largest publisher, Gyldendal, returned Read More …
When Digital Book World announced Data Guy would be delivering the closing keynote speech, during which time he would dazzle us with yet more publishing industry numbers known to nobody else, and incidentally would reveal his true identity and answer his critics, there was a muted response. Data Guy’s true identity is neither here nor Read More …
It’s almost two years since Amazon allowed mainstream publishers to upload ebooks to the Kindle store in five Indian languages: Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati, and Malayalam. Indie authors writing in those languages were put in the ridiculous position of having to upload to Amazon via a third party aggregator to get slice of the action. Read More …
Little known in the English-speaking world, where accessible ebook distribution is dominated by the Big 5 ebook retailers (Amazon, Apple, Nook, Kobo and Google Play) and the Big 5 aggregators (StreetLib, PublishDrive, Draft2Digital and Smashwords), the French distribution platform Youscribe continues to take strides to dominate the Francophone ebook world. Having first formed a partnership Read More …
Back in December 2017 TNPS ran with the headline, S.E. Asia online economy growing faster than predicted. $200bn by 2025. Will publishers rise to the opportunity? S.E. Asia online economy growing faster than predicted. $200bn by 2025. Will publishers rise to the opportunity? It seems some have. This week comes news that, from a base Read More …
The Hot Sheet is a publishing industry news-sheet for authors, produced every two weeks by Porter Anderson and Jane Friedman, and reviewed here every other Sunday (when possible) as one of the best bi-weekly industry overviews available to authors. We’re not interested in delivering breaking news, but perspective on stories that are likely to retain meaning for your Read More …
The Amman International Book Fair is underway in Jordan this week as the Arab book fair season gathers momentum. Although smaller fairs like Al Ain in the UAE are already playing to an enthusiastic crowd – Abu Dhabi’s 10th Al Ain Book Fair is underway as the Arab book fair season gathers pace the Jordan Read More …
