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 ]
In hero-quest terms, the recovery of the Sorcerer's Stone was Harry Potter's first big win, even though he didn't get to keep it. By the time Harry woke up after his first battle with You Know Who, the stone, with all its life-extending and gold-producing properties, had, in fact, been destroyed.... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2016-04-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The latest in a long, ongoing legal feud between German publishers and Google ended victoriously for the search giant last month, when it was cleared of using its market dominance to allegedly punish publishers. But this is symptomatic of a larger issue surrounding ancillary copyright laws,... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-03-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The upcoming movie 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,' based in the world of 'Harry Potter,' is set in America. Upcoming stories published on the site Pottermore will reveal more about the magical culture in the US. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2016-03-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The upcoming movie 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,' based in the world of 'Harry Potter,' is set in America. Upcoming stories published on the site Pottermore will reveal more about the magical culture in the US. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2016-03-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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J .K. Rowling has some good news for fans of her "Harry Potter" universe, especially ones on this side of the Atlantic. The author's website, Pottermore, will publish a four-part story this week called "History of Magic in North America." The story will provide the background for "Fantastic... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2016-03-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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New research from Booklist shows page counts have grown 173% over 40 years, and suggests that JK Rowling’s boy hero may be responsible for large increase in early 2000sChildren’s novels have almost doubled in length over the last 40 years, according to research from US review journal Booklist,... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2016-03-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The script from the forthcoming Harry Potter play leaps to the top of the book bestseller list, a day after its July release was announced. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2016-02-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Author JK Rowling has announced a new book which will follow the next generation as they set off for Hogwarts. Continue reading at The Sydney Morning Herald
[ The Sydney Morning Herald | 2016-02-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts I & II will be published the day after the play begins in London, picking up the wizard’s story 19 years after the final novel in the seriesHarry Potter author JK Rowling’s script of the stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is going to be... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2016-02-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The renowned author's digital publishing house, Pottermore, has retained a monopoly on the sale of Harry Potter ebooks and audio titles ever since its launch. But times they are a-changing, and the company's strategy is undergoing seismic shifts. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2016-01-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The renowned author's digital publishing house, Pottermore, has retained a monopoly on the sale of Harry Potter ebooks and audio titles ever since its launch. But times they are a-changing, and the company's strategy is undergoing seismic shifts. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2016-01-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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New study reveals Julia Donaldson, David Walliams and JK Rowling lead the top 1% of authors, who account for nearly a third of all UK book salesThe gap between publishing’s rich and poor continues to widen, as figures from Nielsen BookScan reveal that the top 50 authors account for more than 13%... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2016-01-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Publishing a children’s book in Russia is not a straightforward matter, as Anna Starobinets found when her detective stories set among woodland animals were deemed to be far too beastly for children I wrote my first children’s book, The Land of Good Girls, in 2009 for my then five-year-old... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2016-01-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Stephen Fry will voice two classic detective stories exclusively for Audible. Fry, who voiced all seven of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, will voice The Coin of Dionysius and The Game Played in the Dark by Ernest Bramah, which features the blind detective Max Carrados who was first... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-12-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A movie based on a book inside a Harry Potter book is here, and this is our first glimpse.During a week where many people have reached critical levels of Star Wars overload, Warner Bros. has released the first look at an entire movie based around a book that was listed on Harry Potter's freshman... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2015-12-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has received his share of celebrity endorsements, with stars such as Mike Tyson and Dennis Rodman backing the controversial billionaire. "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling, however, is decidedly not a member of Trump's fan club. The Scottish writer... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2015-12-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Katniss Everdeen may have come out on top of the weekend box office with an estimated $101 million in domestic ticket sales, but the new "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part 2" fell short of industry expectations and, unlike the "Twilight" and "Harry Potter" young-adult juggernauts, her "Hunger... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2015-11-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Ranjit Bolt has won plaudits with A Lion Was Learning to SkiIn the summer of 2014, the spectacle of a middle-aged playwright selling limericks about “comedic giraffes” and “Spanish cicadas” was a regular one at Cambridge market. But as more followed – elephants, sharks and “a young lady from... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-11-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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JK Rowling's pseudonym Robert Galbraith, Ian McEwan and BBC journalist Kirsty Wark make the longlist for the world's richest literary prize, the International Impac Dublin Literary Award. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2015-11-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Hungry for wands, stuffy spell books and elaborate magical alleys with complicated villain back stories? Never fear, the Harry Potter universe has returned with the new prequel film "Fantastic Beasts." Entertainment Weekly has debuted a collection of stills for the "Harry Potter" prequel,... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2015-11-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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