When is a book not a book? When it is performed by a starry cast of hundreds. Except it has always been more complicated than thatNews this week of a 17% hike in the UK’s audiobook sales might seem like a niche business story, but it raises an existential question. What exactly is an audiobook today? Is it a book? Is it a play? Or is it becoming something else entirely? What is clear is that a jostle for market dominance is driving it into new dimensions. The streaming platform Spotify followed its move into podcasting two years ago with the launch of an audiobooks business. Though it has yet to start making its own recordings, last autumn it made a deal for 200,000 audiobooks to be available to its premium users.Not to be outdone, Amazon-owned Audible – accustomed to being the market leader – upped its game, hiring the Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes to record multi-voice versions of the Dickens novels Oliver Twist and David Copperfield, and announcing last month that it had reached an agreement for a recording of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, voiced by more than 100 actors and featuring a “groundbreaking new soundscape”. The new Potter audiobooks, it said, would not usurp but “sit alongside and complement” conventional recordings by Stephen Fry and Jim Dale, which Audible also hosts. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2024-05-10 17:25:03 UTC ]
The Obamas’ $60m book deal has broken all records. From James Patterson to JK Rowling and Pope John Paul II, here are some of their closest rivals1. Seventeen books by James Patterson ($100-150m)When? 2009 Related: The audacity of hype: could Obama's presidential memoir be the greatest ever? ... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2017-03-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A Soho awards night with David Nicholls and a "very special" Harry Potter screening at the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel London lead the "eclectic" line-up of this year’s London Book & Screen Week. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-02-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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North London retailer the Big Green Bookshop is tweeting out every word of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Bloomsbury) to broadcaster Piers Morgan following his Twitter spat with its author J K Rowling. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-02-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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J K Rowling’s original Harry Potter septet, vocalised by Stephen Fry, dominated the audio download chart in 2016, but their magic fell short of displacing Paula Hawkins’ pre-eminent psychological thriller. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-01-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sales figures for the most popular modern authors round up familiar suspects from Dan Brown to JK Rowling. Taken together, they hint at surprising sales secretsSteve Berry could be forgiven for asking himself every day what it takes to make a book a global bestseller. Back in 2003, the former... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2017-01-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Helped by Harry Potter and the hit fitness guru, year on year takings to December rose sharply to £1.59bnRetail sales struggled in 2016, but JK Rowling cast a spell strong enough to power sales towards a magical £1.6bn during the year, a rise of almost 5% on 2015, according to the latest annual... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2017-01-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Dan Brown is back. Tolkien is back. Tony Abbott is back. Harry Potter is back (well, recycled in four new editions). Continue reading at Stuff
[ Stuff | 2017-01-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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JK Rowling and Bill Bryson top the charts, while film tie-ins give Paula Hawkins and Jojo Moyes a second bite of the cherry – but this unpredictable year has also seen a welcome revival of humorous writingIt was a year when the No 1 book was a play script. When hyper-prolific James Patterson,... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2016-12-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child helped lift sales in the children’s/YA category 31.1% in July over the same month in 2015, according to figures released by the Association of American Publishers as part of its StatShot program. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2016-12-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The bestselling books over the holidays at the e-tailer were 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down,' 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,' and a children's backlist book. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2016-12-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The July publication of 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' helped raise sales in the children's/young adult segment 31.1% in July over a year ago. July sales of adult books fell. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2016-12-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A handwritten and illustrated book - one of only seven produced by the Harry Potter author - is being auctioned. Continue reading at BBC World
[ BBC World | 2016-12-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts 1 and 2' was Amazon's best-selling book of 2016 and was also the year's "most wished for" and "most gifted" book at the e-tailer. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2016-12-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sarah Perry's novel The Essex Serpent is named Waterstones Book of the Year ahead of a Beatrix Potter manuscript and a Harry Potter playscript. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2016-12-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A seven-year-old girl who reads "to forget the war" has been sent the Harry Potter books by the author. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2016-11-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Warner Bros. has signed a deal to buy the gamer-focused YouTube network Machinima in order to expand the movie and TV studio’s digital video business, the company said Thursday. Burbank-based Warner Bros., the studio behind film franchises like Harry Potter and DC Entertainment, was already a... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2016-11-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The release of the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child playscript, published by Little, Brown, has helped Hachette UK to grow its sales by 30.1% in the third quarter, according to results issued by its parent company Lagardere. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-11-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Chicken House m.d. Barry Cunningham, the man who acquired the manuscript for J K Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in the late 1990s, is selling his unique edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard at Sotheby’s. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-11-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A Harry Potter script and a Beatrix Potter story are among the titles up for Waterstones Book of the Year 2016. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2016-11-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent is the only novel on the six-book shortlist, up against JK Rowling’s play script for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and a long-lost Beatrix Potter storySarah Perry’s novel The Essex Serpent might have missed out on the big literary prizes this year, but her... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2016-11-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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