Literary agent predicts 50% royalty rate will 'be the norm'
Literary agent Andrew Wylie believes a 50% digital royalty rate will become widely accepted by publishers once the digital "shake-out" settles down.... "Publishers should pay a 50% digital royalty and...
View ArticleStieg Larsson journalism course rejection letter up for auction
A letter of rejection from the Joint Committee of Colleges of Journalism in Stockholm to applicant 493 the late Stieg Larsson is to be sold at auction in London to help Expo, the anti-fascist,...
View ArticleBookstore sales up year on year
After falling 4% in July, bookstore sales posted unexpectedly strong gains in August, according to preliminary estimates released by the Census Bureau, rising 11.8%. With the gain in August, bookstore...
View ArticleJulian Barnes wins Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending
Fourth time lucky for Julian Barnes, who wins the Man Booker prize 2011 for his novel The Sense of an Ending after missing out on three previous occasions
View ArticleBritish Office of Fair Trading clears Amazon takeover of Book Depository
The Office of Fair Trading has cleared Amazon to take over The Book Depository, ruling the merger would not lead to a lessening of competition within the UK book industry. The Book Depository is based...
View ArticleWorld Book Night in UK looking for 20,000 people to give away books
The organizers of the UK's 2nd World Book Night have announced the 25 titles that will be given away on April 23, 2012 - and have also issued a recruitment appeal for 20,000 booklovers to help give...
View ArticleJohn Wiley & Sons sues BitTorrent users
John Wiley and Sons, one of the worlds largest book publishers, has sued 27 BitTorrent users at a federal court in New York claiming that the defendants have shared copies of its "For Dummies" books...
View ArticleAmazon launches Kindle lending library
Amazon.com has launched the Kindle Owners' Lending Library for e-books for customers who have an Amazon Prime membership (costing $79 a year). Kindle owners can borrow one book a month, with about 5000...
View ArticleAlan Hollinghurst wins Galaxy Award
Alan Hollinghurst, whose recently published book, The Stranger's Child, was controversially omitted from this year's Man Booker shortlist, has been lauded at last Friday's Galaxy National Book Awards,...
View ArticleConcern grows over Kindle lending
Concern is growing in the US over the launch of Amazon's Kindle lending initiative. Amazon launched the new service last week aimed at Kindle-owning Prime users, but publishers have expressed concern...
View ArticleSalvage the Bones wins National Book Award for Fiction
Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones has won the National Book Award for fiction. Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve won for nonfiction. The poetry prize went to Nikki Finney's Head Off & Split and...
View ArticleCosta shortlist announced
The Costa Book Awards have been announced. The list includes The Sense of an Ending, Tiny Sunbirds Faraway, and The Unforgotten Coat.
View ArticlePenguin cancels Kindle library lending - others may follow
Overdrive, which distributes ebooks to libraries, announced yesterday that Penguin Group USA has instructed them to "disable 'Get for Kindle' functionality for all Penguin ebooks". Penguin also told...
View ArticleAuthor Anne McCaffrey, creator of Pern, dies
Anne McCaffrey, author of nearly 100 books, co-author of more than 30 and best known for the Dragonriders of Pern series, died on Monday at her home in Ireland. She was 85.
View ArticleMukherjee's Emperor of Maladies wins Guardian First Book Award
The only non-fiction title shortlisted for the 2011 Guardian First Book Award has taken home the £10,000 prize (~$16000). Sarah Churchwell, one of the judges, said: "The Emperor of All Maladies is a...
View ArticlePennsylvania joins other states in starting to enforce sales tax collection...
The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue posted a Sales and Use Tax Bulletin on its website yesterday stating that it will soon begin enforcing sales tax collection "by any remote retailer, including...
View ArticleDavid Guterson wins Bad Sex in Fiction award
An account of a frenzied encounter in a shower has earned US writer David Guterson the annual Bad Sex In Fiction Award for his novel Ed King, which takes the Sophoclean tragedy Oedipus Rex and...
View ArticleWorld Book Night's 2012 mission to take books to hardest to reach readers
World Book Night founder, Jamie Byng, says there is a "very good chance" the book donation event will take place in "dozens" of countries by 2014. Speaking with the UK publishing industry mag, The...
View ArticleEuropean Union & US Justice Dept investigate 'improper collusion' to prevent...
A day after the European Union announced that it has begun formal antitrust proceedings against five international publishers and Apple over the agency pricing program for e-books, the Justice...
View ArticleBBC short story prize open to international entries
The BBC's award for short fiction is to turn international for one year to celebrate the Olympics, with the shortlist to be expanded from five stories to 10. The award is now open for submissions from...
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