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 ]
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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The book trade is aiming to put books at the heart of Valentine's Day, with publishers unveiling a range of campaigns reflecting that there is a light and a dark side to the day. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-02-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The UK’s possible exit from the European Union, looking likely to be the subject of a summer referendum, would be a disaster for the book trade, according to industry figures such as Waterstones m.d. James Daunt, Bonnier Publishing c.e.o. Richard Johnson and Alma Books m.d. Alessandro Gallenzi. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-02-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Bookseller is seeking the book trade’s views on whether the UK should leave the European Union ahead of the nation’s referendum vote. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-02-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The author advocacy group critical of Amazon known as Authors United has joined with the Authors Guild to host a discussion about the retailer’s power and influence in the book trade. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2016-01-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The book trade must "work together" to navigate potential disadvantages of ebook lending, the chief executive of the Booksellers Association, Tim Godfray, has said. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-12-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In the late 1990s the venerable book trade chronicler Ian Norrie wrote to The Bookseller’s then-editor Louis Baum to complain about the inclusion of an author in the magazine’s series of The Great and the Good. “Authors are not part of the book trade per se,” Norrie wrote. This week The... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-12-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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We over-sentimentalise independence in the book trade. We may not mean to, but we do. Smart independent publishers such as Faber, Canongate, Kogan Page, Profile (and yes, even Bloomsbury) use this status as part of their marketing, while the loss of independence at companies such as John Murray... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-11-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Bookseller and FutureBook invite you to our inaugural Author Day. Now is the time for authors, publishers and the book trade to come together, share ideas and move from discussion to action. At a time of unprecedented change and promise for authors, our emphasis is on exploring potentially... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-10-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF) 2015 took place in the last week of August under a storm cloud of a slightly weakened Chinese economy and a tumbling stock market. Yet at BIBF, Chinese and foreign publishers were talking of a bright and sunny future: a book trade that is solid... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-09-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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It's holiday for some in the beachy reaches of summertime, but Enders Analysis' new take on the UK consumer book market puts chilling stress on "how important it is that the industry innovates vigorously in the next two to three years." Using data from Nielsen Book and Kantar, Enders' Douglas... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-07-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Led by increases in the book trade, 2014 sales of graphic novels and periodical comics in North America rose in every sales channel except the newsstand, where sales of periodical comics declined. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-07-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sales of comics for kids and YA readers continue to grow in the book trade along with the number and variety of kids comics on display from such publishers as Andrew McMeel, Papercutz, Toon Books, Scholastic and others. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-06-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A “standout” Pan Macmillan and a resurgent Waterstones were two of the big winners at the Bookseller Industry Awards 2015, taking home the Publisher and Retailer of the Year prizes, respectively. Sam Husain, the recently retired c.e.o. of Foyles, was honoured with the BA Award for Outstanding... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-05-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The book trade is facing more library cuts and an uncertain future in Europe and at the department for Business, Industry and Skills, industry figures say, as they digest the results of the general election, emerging overnight. The Conservatives have racked up 330 seats for an overall majority,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-05-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The book trade has abandoned the Liberal Democrats in favour of Labour and the Green Party in the five years since the last election, according to a poll of voting intentions conducted by The Bookseller. Support for libraries and making Amazon pay a fair share of tax are the issues the trade is... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-05-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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