Writers, championed by Philip Pullman, may object to attending literary gatherings for free. But the events help to sustain a reading culturePhilip Pullman became cheerleader for a growing band of refuseniks last week when he resigned as president of the Oxford literary festival because it didn’t pay speakers. Thirty more writers immediately picked up the chant, with a letter to the trade journal the Bookseller calling for all authors and publishers to boycott festivals that expected writers to appear for free.With a 2014 survey reporting that the median income for authors is now just £11,000, these are undoubtedly lean times, and it’s understandable that emotions are running high. But, according to recent figures, the earnings gap has also widened dramatically between the top 1% and the rest – which translates, in festival terms, into the sort of writers who audiences will queue up to hear, and those for whom they won’t. Related: Book festival speakers’ pay is not an ‘additional cost’ | Letters Related: Philip Pullman resigns as Oxford literary festival patron over lack of pay for authors Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2016-01-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
News tagged with:
#median income
#additional cost
Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Wed, 11/05/2011 - 15:41 America wants to hold its own World Book Night following in the footsteps of the UK. The American Booksellers Association said it is "exploring" the possibility of replicating "a version" of the event, which saw 20,000 people... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#5th march
Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Tue, 10/05/2011 - 16:38 W H Smith has signed an exclusive deal to extend the Richard and Judy Book Club until 2015. The high street retailer has signed a contract with the celebrity couple to personally read and recommend eight fiction titles to WHS... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#fiction titles
#celebrity couple
#exclusive deal
Written By: Philip Stone Publication Date: Tue, 10/05/2011 - 15:50 Book sales bounced back after a dire seven days in the week of the Royal Wedding in which physical book sales plummeted to an eight-year low. According to Nielsen BookScan data, spending in the seven days to 7th May was up... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#eight-year low
#royal wedding
Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Tue, 10/05/2011 - 08:59 Book sales for April were "well down" in a month where general UK retail sales rose by 5.2% on last year. The British Retail Consortium (BRC) today (10th May) reported like-for-like sales were up 5.2% in value from April... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#modest boost
#book sales
Publication Date: Tue, 10/05/2011 - 08:24 Random House imprint Yellow Jersey Press has scored a hat trick of wins at the British Sports Book Awards, with W H Smith also taking home the best sports book retailer prize. Catrine Clay's Trautmann's Journey won best biography, while Promised Lane by... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#rugby book
#taking home
#hat trick
Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Mon, 09/05/2011 - 15:19 BBC Radio 5 Live has launched a Blokey Book Club to encourage men to read more fiction. The Mens Hour show formed the club, which will ask listeners to recommend and comment on their favourite fiction through the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#good read
The editor Robert Loomis, who is retiring from Random House after 54 years, is known for nurturing writers including Maya Angelou, William Styron, Shelby Foote and Calvin Trillin. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2011-05-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#random house
And the winner of this years Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre is... the Drama Book Shop, an independent New York City bookstore dating to 1917, 30 years older than the Tony Awards. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2011-05-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#tony awards
In starting Bookish.com, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Group USA and Hachette Book Group hope to provide one-stop shopping for books and information about authors. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2011-05-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#simon schuster
#publishers make
A $5 million lawsuit against Simon & Schuster over a book by former President Jimmy Carter was dropped by the plaintiffs on Thursday, three months after it was filed. The plaintiffs in the class-action suit had argued that Mr. Carter's "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," about the Arab-Israeli... Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2011-05-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#class-action suit
#simon schuster
#media decoder
Barnes & Noble Inc. will unveil a new electronic book reader later this month, the bookseller told analysts and investors on Wednesday, according to a federal filing released after the close of trading. Continue reading at AllThingsD
[ AllThingsD | 2011-05-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#barnes noble
All of those Amazon Kindle sales -- and, presumably, sales of competitive ebook readers from Barnes & Noble and Apple -- have made an impact at publisher Simon & Schuster. The CBS unit says Q1 digital sales doubled over the previous year, and now represent 18 percent of the company's the... Continue reading at AllThingsD
[ AllThingsD | 2011-05-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#$7 million
#higher margin
#apple --
#barnes noble
Publication Date: Wed, 04/05/2011 - 08:50 Michael Morpurgo, Robyn Young and Simon Scarrow are to take part in the inaugural Festival of Historical Writing, launched by the Historical Writers' Association. As reported in March, Transworld novelist M C Scott formed the association as a forum for... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#inaugural festival
#historical writers
#simon scarrow
#robyn young
Written By: Philip Jones Publication Date: Tue, 03/05/2011 - 09:22 The digital publishing market is now worth 6% of UK publishers' sales, the Publishers Association has revealed, with consumer digital sales up more than 300% in 2010 to £16mthe third year of treble digit growth. The PA... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#publishers association
#uk publishers
#digital sales
Written By: Philip Jones Publication Date: Tue, 03/05/2011 - 11:42 E-book sales at Hachette UK quadrupled in the first quarter of 2011 and are more than 5% of HUKs trade sales, the company revealed today (3rd May), adding that it was beginning to catch up with the US, where ebooks now account... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#hachette uk
#e-book sales
Monday nights Sandra Boynton book event at the Barnes & Noble on Manhattans Upper East Side looked like a pretty normal book signing--normal for Boynton, the bestselling childrens book author, anyway. Toddlers and slightly older kids, some dressed in pajamas, crammed into the event space,... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2011-05-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#barnes noble
Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Tue, 03/05/2011 - 08:30 High street retailer Argos intends to increase its online book range from 500 to 5,000 titles over the next month. The chain store, known for stocking a large range of non-food products, launched its books category on its... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#previously sold
#online store
#books category
#large range
The Publishers Association have released new figures which explain how much damage ebooks are doing to their paper based alternatives. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2011-05-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#publishers association
#paper books
Three weeks shy of a year ago, St. Martin's Press signed up a book by a Navy SEAL Team Six sniper, chronicling how he became an elite warrior and the battle that nearly cost him his life. Today, with news of Osama Bin Laden's death reverberating around the world, SMP is getting ready for a rush... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2011-05-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#death reverberating
#elite warrior
#press signed
#weeks shy
#seal team
Three weeks shy of a year ago, St. Martin's Press signed up a book by a Navy SEAL Team Six sniper, chronicling how he became an elite warrior and the battle that nearly cost him his life. Today, with news of Osama Bin Laden's death reverberating around the world, SMP is getting ready for a rush... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2011-05-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | All news stories tagged with:
#death reverberating
#elite warrior
#press signed
#weeks shy
#bin laden
#seal team