Category: UK

Canongate’s “rewarding year” with “record breaking backlist sales” and ebook, audio, and global sales all rising is part of a bigger picture

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After several years of ebook sales “plateauing” as publishers increased ebook prices to avoid cannibalizing print sales, and audio grabbing the headlines as the only digital format that mattered, ebooks have been gradually edging their way back into the publishing news. This week comes an announcement from the UK’s Canongate that ebook sales were up Read More …

Dash – a new digital-first commercial fiction imprint – launching from Orion this autumn

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Commissioning editor Victoria Oundjian will lead Dash, a new digital-first commercial fiction imprint from Hachette-owned UK publisher Orion, with the aim to, connect readers with stories, fast. All fiction genres are up for submissions  (dashdigital@orionbooks.co.uk) and authors are being sought across the English-speaking world. The Bookseller reports that the first title for the new imprint, Read More …

The imaginary death of books by streaming continues as Netflix makes “massive financial commitment” to DC’s “most-expensive TV foray ever”

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Neil Gaiman’s Sandman is no stranger to options. The graphic novel has been in line to become a feature film on a few occasions, reports The Hollywood Reporter, but none managed the distance. One reason was summed up by screenwriter Eric Heiserrer, who said in 2016, the best version of this property exists as an HBO Read More …

Ebook & audiobook VAT set to tumble in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Poland and Czech Republic on 1 July

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One reason digital books haven’t, mostly, take off as they did in the US this past decade has been the VAT rate which, in the EU, meant digital books were treated as services and therefore attracted a higher duty than regular printed books. Following an EU ruling last year individual countries have the right to Read More …

Boldwood Books goes energetically global with simultaneous ebook, audiobook and POD, but will they still be leaving money on the table?

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With a name like Boldwood Books one really wouldn’t expect anything less than a bold launch of a new publishing operation, and that’s exactly what Amanda Ridout has delivered. While many bigger publishers have chosen to window releases, eschew the benefits of POD, downplay ebooks and carry on with archaic territorial restrictions, Amanda Ridout’s Boldwood Books Read More …

As the London Book Fair looms, invisible millions attend book fairs and festivals around the globe

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If it’s February it must be the Amar Ekushey Boi Mela in Bangladesh, an annual festival of books that runs the entire month of February. Last year the boi mela sold books to the USD equivalent of just shy of $10 million. But hands up anyone who has Bangladesh on their book market bucket list? Read More …

Amazon’s Audible says self-published ebooks and paperbacks are not evidence that an author has been published

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With the announcement in December that Amazon-owned Audible was sponsoring the prestigious Sunday Times Short Story Award came the prospect that the winners would not just earn some extra cash but would have their entries published as an audiobook that would reach a still wider audience. Which all sounds great. The Sunday Times Short Story Read More …

Sophie Rochester’s The Literary Platform shutters after ten years. Moves on to life-style courses

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Subscribers to book tech consultancy website The Literary Platform will have been surprised to receive an email today stating the site is being archived. Sophie Rochester explained, I’m starting off the New Year with a Kondo-esque digital spring clean and this means shutting down The Literary Platform after nearly 10 years! I’ll be concentrating all Read More …

Self-published comic book to become Netflix series – Again

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What are the chances? You self-publish a comic book. Someone finds an old copy in a trash can. He happens to be a TV director. Next thing you know, your self-published comic book is a TV series. Now try count the odds for it happening twice! Okay, so there was no trash can involved the Read More …

A look at the UK book wholesaler Gardners (via ALLi)

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Amazon is also a major customer – and many of those books in the Amazon packaging are coming to you straight from Gardners. That will be news to many indie authors reading this, as will the news that Gardners handles ebooks.   Head over to ALLi for the tour.   At which point just to Read More …

ALLi 3, VAT on ebooks in EU, Instafreebie rebrands, and the new Bookscan – The Hot Sheet Reviewed

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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 …

Start The Day Global – 5 October 2018

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We Start The Day Global today with e-visits to Botswana, India, Brazil, Kuwait and the UK. First, this from twitter. This is Sebilo Books advocating its readers to head along to Goodreads to find their next read. We’ve all heard of Goodreads, of course. Sebilo Books? That’s a small publisher in Botswana in southern Africa. Read More …

Start the Day Global – 30 September 2018

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South Africa, Canada , the USA, the UK and Nigeria are on the travel map today as we start the day global today in what you may or may not consider the USA: Puerto Rico. If we outside the US and Caribbean think of Puerto Rico at all it is probably in relation to the Read More …

Start The Day Global – 28 September 2018

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We’re into our second year here at TNPS and rolling out a new feature, Start the Day Global, which will be a ragbag of international stories that pass my desk each day that I don’t have time to devote a dedicated post to. Here’s today’s curation. It was World Literacy Day earlier this month, and Read More …

The Week In Review

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Here’s a summary of TNPS posts from the past seven days. Sao Paulo’s Avenida Paulista bookstore closes – Fnac Brazil now has just one bookstore standing Setswana? Indonesian? Can you tell the difference? Nor can Microsoft A mermaid wearing a bra among the books banned in Kuwait, but protests are gathering momentum Big Bad Wolf Read More …

Scotland’s Wigtown Book Festival kicks off with record advance ticket sales

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I usually tend to shy clear of US and Uk book festivals, which get plenty enough coverage elsewhere, but make an exception for those that drive home a key theme of TNPS – that we are witnessing a digitally driven Global New Renaissance quite unparalleled in human history, and that, far from books being the Read More …

UK’s Bradford Lit Fest and USA’s Washington National Book Fest see record attendance

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The UK’s Bradford Literature Festival launched in 2014 with a two-day event that attracted 968 people. As we all know, no-one reads books anymore because they are all too busy bingeing on Netflix or wasting their time on social media or (insert latest fashionable nonsense). So one can only guess at why the Bradford Literature Read More …

UK small publishers find new ways to survive as chain bookstores turn them away

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The Bookseller reports today that British and international smaller publishers are finding many UK bookstores raising the barrier to getting coveted shelf-space. Bigger chains in particular appear reluctant to risk shelf-space for debut authors with no track record, or for titles from “ethnic” authors or with “diverse” content. London-based publisher of African writing, Cassava Republic, Read More …

Britain uses “Kafkaesque” rules to refuse visas to authors invited to the Edinburgh International Book Festival

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There’s a clue in the word “international. The Edinburgh International Book Festival may not be the biggest book event in the world, but it is one of the most respected. Or rather, it used to be. But in the insular world of Brexit chaos and intolerance that is today’s Britain it seems the Edinburgh Festival Read More …

Bonnier’s Bookbeat clocks 100,000 subscribers as growth continues, but UK publishers still aren’t interested

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A month ahead of schedule, Bookbeat, the audiobook and ebook subscription arm of the Swedish publishing giant Bonnier, has reached its milestone of 100,000 subscribers, reports Boktugg’s Sölve Dahlgren., who says the company is on target to to reach SEK 150 million ($17 million) in revenue for the full year 2018. Bookbeat CEO Niclas Sandin Read More …