In 2009, two bookshops a week were closing in the UK and the days of physical books seemed numbered. Now, indie stores are booming. What explains the turnaround – and can it be sustained?When Sarah Mullen was asked to set up a children’s book festival in a leafy suburb of Birmingham in 2012, she couldn’t find an independent bookseller to run the bookstall. “So we all rolled up our sleeves and did it ourselves,” she says. Pregnant with her third child, she had recently given up her job as a solicitor to work for the Bournville Village Trust. Mullen’s task was to set up the Bournville BookFest, which ran for 10 years before being brought to a halt by the Covid pandemic. But far from accepting defeat, she rolled up her sleeves once again and “pivoted the whole thing into a bookshop”. Two years on, the Bookshop on the Green is thriving – a living rebuttal to the once widely held idea that the digital era meant certain death for the neighbourhood bookstore.When I visit early on a Friday morning, a turquoise vintage Smith Corona typewriter holds centre stage in the Bookshop on the Green. Beside it stands Bradley Taylor, a poet whose job is to write poems on demand for anyone who asks. He has composed a lot of Batman and football poems for the children who pile in on Saturdays, he says, before sitting down to tap one out for me about the joy of bookshops. In the multitasking tradition of small retailers, Taylor also works in the shop. He made his cosplay debut last month as the... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2023-07-27 09:00:32 UTC ]
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The first day of the ABA's annual conference tackled topics including the basics of bookselling, marketing and media strategies for booksellers in the digital age, and how publishers can make booksellers' lives easier. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-02-13 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Breaking the rules: That's how many branding experts viewed Barnes & Noble's new, idiosyncratic approach to its store designs as it mounts a comeback and tries to fend off the likes of Amazon. "Unpredictable and dynamic" is how CEO James Daunt described the new... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2024-02-07 19:31:31 UTC ]
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Booksellers and authors prepare to gather in Ohio’s Queen City for the 2024 ABA Winter Institute. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-01-26 05:00:00 UTC ]
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The organization, which has had offices in the New York City metro area since its formation in 1900, confirmed this week that it will become a “permanently remote organization” at the end of February. CEO Allison Hill said that the closure “doesn’t change the way we've been working.” Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-01-25 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Author–illustrator Vashti Harrison happened to be in Miami to celebrate her father's 89th birthday when—at 9:30 p.m., while sorting laundry—she received the news of her Caldecott win for 'Big.' Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-01-23 05:00:00 UTC ]
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In 2023, the major publishers maintained their grip on the bestseller lists, but indies scored some notable successes, with Entangled, Kensington, and Sourcebooks among those making inroads. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-01-19 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Like last week's Golden Globes, the Emmys were very good to streaming services. The 75th Primetime Emmys aired on Monday, January 15 and saw Max, Hulu and Netflix take home the most awards by a solid margin. Hulu led the pack, winning six Primetime Emmys thanks to its dark comedy, The Bear. The... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2024-01-16 10:44:09 UTC ]
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An inside look at the debut speculative novel so charming that Avid Reader Press executive editor Margo Shickmanter preempted it from her bathtub. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-01-16 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Tamara Megrelishvili, founder of Georgian bookstore Prospero's talks about the impact of diminished tourism, war, and political unease. The post In Tbilisi: Bookseller Tamara Megrelishvili on Sales Trends appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2024-01-10 17:45:34 UTC ]
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Thanks to mild weather and a strong economy, December sales at bookstores across the Midwest were up, with booksellers reporting increases ranging from 13% to 31%. Adult fiction and political nonfiction were popular, as were children's picture books. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-01-09 05:00:00 UTC ]
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My longtime girlfriend is a longtime bookseller. Her relationship with bookselling predates ours three times over. It is a surprisingly taxing career path—one that asks of the body, and of the mind. There are the bad days, where she brings home the classic bookseller gripes: failed hand-sells,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-01-05 09:56:55 UTC ]
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Greta Livraria in Lisbon and Rare Birds in Edinburgh are among the new stores dedicated to women’s writingWith its neatly arranged tables and shelves laden with books written by women, Greta Livraria’s small space masks its big ambitions. Since opening earlier this year, the bookstore in Lisbon... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-12-28 05:00:25 UTC ]
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In comments submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office this week, the Association of American Publishers slammed assertions by the tech industry that fair use permits AI developers to use copyrighted works to train their systems without permission or compensation. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-12-06 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Categorising fiction may help to sell books, but it says little about how writers write or readers readIn her Reith lecture of 2017, recently published for the first time in a posthumous collection of nonfiction, A Memoir of My Former Self, Hilary Mantel recalled the beginnings of her career as... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-11-27 12:30:00 UTC ]
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Bookseller Katherine Morgan has founded her own online bookstore—all while working two gigs at Bookshop.org and Powell's City of Books. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-11-27 05:00:00 UTC ]
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A founder of the St. Mark’s Bookshop in the East Village, he prided himself on stocking titles that were not “too popular” and stayed in business for four decades. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2023-11-23 01:12:36 UTC ]
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Attorneys for a group of booksellers and publishing industry associations argue that a district court in Texas correctly enjoined HB 900, and that the injunction should be allowed to stand. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-11-14 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Revenue in the quarter ended September 30, 2023, rose 8% over fiscal 2023 at HarperCollins, and profits jumped 67%. Executives at parent company News Corp expect the publisher to show marked improvement over last year. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-11-10 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Three of the Big Five publishers struggled in the first nine months of 2023, according to recent financial results, as the industry coped with sagging sales and rising costs. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-11-10 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Helped by the bookselling community, Akimbo reopened in April after a fire destroyed its first location. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-11-03 04:00:00 UTC ]
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