Amazon this week announced that it has filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California against some 20 individuals scamming authors by falsely claiming an affiliation with Amazon Publishing and Kindle Direct Publishing. Read more
Three of publishing's most important organizations have teamed up to write a letter to the chairman of the House Antitrust Subcommittee investigating the market power of Big Tech to press their case that, over the last several years, Amazon's growing dominance over book publishing and bookselling has fundamentally altered the competitive framework of the industry. Read more
As the last decade concluded, book publishers breathed a sigh of relief. The 2010s were characterized by a series of Amazon-related shock waves-the growing power of the retail behemoth, the rise of e-books, a related Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit, and the decimation of bookstores both large and small. But publishers had survived. Read more
Have you read Victoria Helen Stone's False Step? No? Surprising, given that it's a best seller, and that you clicked on an article about books and publishing-I thought you were more widely read. Surely you've at least gotten through Loreth Anne White's The Dark Bones? Julianne MacLean's A Fire Sparkling? Claire McGowan's What You Did? Read more
Amazon's dubious ethical employment standards are nothing new. You know the ecommerce giant is unrivalled when it comes to logistics and infrastructure. And their unscrupulous pricing strategy has long ceased to astonish - retailers simply cannot compete. Read more
So, you are about to self-publish a book in e-book or print-on-demand format. It seems like a no-brainer to sign an exclusive contract with Amazon Kindle, and up goes your book to Amazon's vast online audience. After all, presumably they own 60 or 70% of the e-book market. Read more
A recent report (pdf) from Bowker, the US company that issues International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN), shows that self-publishing is growing rapidly. Between 2010 and 2015, the number of ISBNs from self-published books grew by 375%. From 2014 and 2015 alone, the number grew by 21%. Read more
The fact is, we don't know what the heck Amazon is now, even assuming we ever did. When it first appeared on the scene, it seemed clear that it was a new kind of bookstore. Think of Barnes & Noble, add the Internet, and you have Amazon, right? Well, not so fast. Even at the outset Amazon seemed to be playing a different game. Read more
‘I was very aware that because the manuscript has my name on it, people would just publish it, however bad it was, and I wanted honest feedback. I wanted to know that someone believed in the book and I truly enjoyed getting unvarnished feedback through my agent. There was one editor who did not like Strike having a famous father and made that point.
'My theatre background has probably helped me be a braver writer and maybe more rigorous, too: the theatre can sustain bold and abstract ideas, but not slow or sloppy storytelling'
Theatre producer Ellie Keel's debut novel, dark academia thriller The Four was published on 11 April by HQ.
In April of this year, Timothy Garton Ash collected his reward money for winning the prestigious 2024 Lionel Gelber Prize.
Today, in Kyiv, the Oxford University professor presented what he bought with it - a new set of reconnaissance drones for immediate use in the war against Russia.
Acclaimed for her accounts of the darkness and desire found in everyday life, ‘the Canadian Chekhov' has died, having suffered from dementia for more than a decade
Shimmr AI, an artificial intelligence start-up that aims to help publishers promote more of their list, has recruited a host of high-profile advisers from across the books industry, signalling the firm's plans to "deploy globally".
As Little, Brown's SFF imprint Orbit celebrates its 50th anniversary, publisher Anna Jackson reflects on its current record-breaking run and on building the brands of the future.