A heart-warming love letter to books and bookshops, by an amenable fellow turned antisocial old misanthrope“I was in here two years ago and you had a book by Roger Penrose. Do you know what happened to it?” Shaun Bythell – owner of the Book Shop in Wigtown, Galloway – has 100,000 books in stock, sells 20,000 a year, and has handled nearly 1m second-hand books since he bought the shop in 2001. Unsurprisingly, the Roger Penrose volume had not stuck in his mind.Before he entered the book trade at the tender age of 31, he was “amenable and friendly”. Now, after many years of fielding bizarre questions, constant haggling over prices (why is it “acceptable to try to screw the profit out of struggling small businesses” but not supermarkets?), and struggling to survive despite Amazon’s “icy grip” on bookselling, he has been forced to embrace the stereotype of the “impatient, intolerant, antisocial proprietor”. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2019-08-24 10:58:38 UTC ]
The book trade has expressed surprise over the snap general election called by prime minister Theresa May and is divided over whether it will harm or boost the book market. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-04-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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As Theresa May triggers Article 50, Philip Jones considers what this means for the future of the book trade. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-03-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The book trade is celebrating International Women's Day today (8th March) with a host of events and publications ready to show solidarity with women worldwide, as well as the launch of a new prize for Women in Translation to address the gender imbalance in literature in translation. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-03-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Retailers blame the presidential campaign and postelection anxiety for the year ending on a flat note, but some categories are growing in the book trade and in the comics shop market. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2017-02-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The book trade has generally welcomed Amazon’s new ebook offer, but questioned the five year cap for the new deal and raised concerns over whether it will hold in the UK in a post-Brexit world. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-01-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Rogers, Coleridge & White co-founder Gill Coleridge reflects on five decades in the book trade, and how a new bursary in honour of Deborah Rogers will aid those embarking on their first. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-12-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Members of the US book trade have urged the industry to remember the powerful role books play in promoting unity and understanding in the wake of the US election result which saw Republican candidate Donald Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton to take the White House as US president elect. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-11-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Über literary agent Ed Victor muses on his 40 years working in the book trade. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-11-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The book trade has reacted with “dismay”, “horror” and “frustration” to this morning’s shock news that Republican candidate Donald Trump has beaten Democrat Hillary Clinton to take the White House as US president elect. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-11-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jessica Faircliff looks at the challenges faced by the book trade in South Africa. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-10-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jonathan Ruppin says the book trade "remains riddled" with bias when it comes to ethnic diversity. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-09-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Genre is a funny thing in the book trade: almost essential as a marketing tool, yet used too strictly, or taken as a metonym for too wide a range of titles, it inevitably attracts ire. The nom de guerre currently in vogue is “grip lit”. Whether one objects to the term and its use or not, it has,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-09-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Bookshops in the UK are being called on by one of China’s largest bookstore chains, Zhejiang Xinhua, and an online journal devoted to the book trade in China, Bookdao, to attend a global summit to tackle the “threat” of online retailing. The two-day forum, scheduled for 11th–12th April 2017,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-09-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Caution evident in buying and selling of politically sensitive material amid fears of growing repression from mainland’s Communist partyThe 2016 Hong Kong book fair, the most important event in the city’s literary calendar, opened its doors on Wednesday to familiar long queues and hordes of... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2016-07-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The White Horse Bookshop is sponsoring the Richard Jefferies Society Writers’ Prize while the book trade is experiencing a “golden age of nature writing”. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-07-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Publisher who turned Faber & Faber into a champion of the best contemporary writingMatthew Evans, who has died aged 74 from leukaemia, was a great publisher who also happened to play a decisive role in the making of the musical Cats. He transformed Faber & Faber from the Vatican of... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2016-07-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Animal Media Group, an independent media and book production company that is looking to ramp up its presence in the book trade, has signed a two year distribution deal with Consortium. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2016-06-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Britain will vote this week on whether to remain in or leave the European Union, but what does the book trade think? Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-06-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Bernardi succeeds longtime Dark Horse book trade executive Michael Martens, who is retiring after 22 years, and will takeover in time for the American Library Association meeting in Orlando, Florida. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2016-06-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The book trade should not get complacent following a rise in print book sales, Anthony Forbes Watson, managing director of Pan Macmillan, warned delegates to Nielsen’s Book Insights Conference 2016. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-03-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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