Corporate sponsorship needs to steer clear of impinging on artistic freedomsNews that investment managers the Man Group is withdrawing its sponsorship from the Booker prize after 18 years has shocked the literary world. The hedge fund’s decision to move on was linked in the press to novelist Sebastian Faulks’s negative comments about the firm last year, made on the How to Fail podcast . The Man Group, he said, are “not the sort of people who should be sponsoring literary prizes, they’re the kind of people literary figures ought to be criticising … They’re kind of the enemy”. The prize, he said, became “terribly irritating” when Man took it over; and he himself would not be prepared to take “50 big ones” from the company, in the unlikely event of its being awarded to him. Luke Ellis, the head of the Man Group, referred to these remarks at the 2018 prize ceremony, and there has been speculation that he withdrew the company’s sponsorship in a fit of umbrage.Perhaps disobliging remarks such as this do not help smooth the frequently uncomfortable relationship between art and commerce. But correlation is not causation, and the Man Group’s removal of support is, insiders insist, more to do with its changing priorities around corporate responsibility than anger at outspoken authors. Those close to the Booker say Man Group’s departure has been known for months, but that this year’s prizes – both for English-language fiction and its international award – will carry the Man name. A... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2019-02-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Corporate sponsorship needs to steer clear of impinging on artistic freedomsNews that investment managers the Man Group is withdrawing its sponsorship from the Booker prize after 18 years has shocked the literary world. The hedge fund’s decision to move on was linked in the press to novelist... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-02-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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People want stories and that means cultivating a publishing ecosystem where big and small can flourishThis week both the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority and the Department of Justice in the US announced investigations into the planned $2.2bn acquisition of the publisher Simon &... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-03-28 17:25:47 UTC ]
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This year’s Booker and Turner prizes tell us artists and even judges are repudiating the winner-takes-all award. It may be time to find new ways to celebrate the artsThe past year has been a curious one for cultural prizes. The Booker, when the judges failed to agree on a single winner, ended up... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-12-15 18:25:01 UTC ]
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Almost a third of school-age children are from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. But they will still struggle to find characters who resemble themselvesBooks can show us the world both as it is, and as it could be – “mirrors and windows”, as the author Malorie Blackman notes. For... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2018-07-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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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... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2024-05-10 17:25:03 UTC ]
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Through his businesses, Rupert Murdoch pushed a world view with the pursuit of money at its heartThere are not many chairmanships of companies that would so fascinate writers, and television producers, that they would make four series about them. Rupert Murdoch’s long tenure at Fox and News Corp... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-09-22 17:40:41 UTC ]
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Alice Oseman’s tale of queer romance is a global success story built on fans who want to feel good about themselves in tough timesAfter boy met boy in a crowdfunded graphic novel set in a British grammar school in 2018, hearts began to flutter and tills started to ring around the world. This... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-08-03 17:41:27 UTC ]
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The Harry Potter publisher ascribes its record profits to a hunger for affordable diversion. That’s the magic of booksIn the gloom of a UK economy teetering on the edge of recession, a glittering puff of smoke wafted up last week from the publisher that will for ever be associated with Harry... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-06-04 17:25:05 UTC ]
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Censorship is surging thanks to an organised rightwing minority targeting books on LGBTQ and Black characters and issues“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door,” warns a character in Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s dystopian vision of an America where books are considered so dangerous they... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-04-13 17:21:33 UTC ]
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The failure of a recent bid to merge two large publishing companies shines a light on a central issue of cultural powerDespite a rise in self-publishing, commercial publishers are still the main gatekeepers of what arrives on our bookshelves. As such, they have great cultural and – if a book... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-11-04 18:25:28 UTC ]
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The world’s richest man promises more than he has delivered. His social network purchase is likely to go the same wayElon Musk is a fan of the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. When his spacecraft company SpaceX successfully sent its Falcon Heavy rocket payload into orbit around the sun in... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-11-01 18:50:19 UTC ]
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The social media platform is revolutionising bookshops and galvanising publishers. Enjoy it while it lastsThe bestselling book in the UK last week, and of the year so far, is an American novel that was published in 2016. If that sentence sounds implausible, the odds are you have not yet caught... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-09-04 17:25:02 UTC ]
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The online virtual reality experience that almost every tech giant today wishes to commercially exploit may not catch onIn the 1992 sci-fi dystopia Snow Crash, the author Neal Stephenson imagined a bleak 21st century where the collapse of the global economy had seen governments fall and their... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-02-07 19:11:48 UTC ]
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A government proposal to ease restrictions on the sale of imported cultural works risks harming a world-class industryThe hoopla around the release of Sally Rooney’s new novel on Tuesday – with bookshops opening early, and queues of shoppers eager to lay their hands on Beautiful World, Where Are... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-09-07 18:00:33 UTC ]
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Many publishers are enjoying record sales – but not all. We must take care that those with the biggest names and deepest pockets are not the only beneficiariesAs the weather turns and the days shorten, as trees bend low with fruit and blackberries darken the hedges, bookshops are bracing for a... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-08-23 17:25:02 UTC ]
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It’s no surprise that people read a lot when stuck at home. But novels are more than a way to kill timeIt’s no surprise that keen readers have looked to books for historical analogues or literary insights into the coronavirus outbreak. Sales of the English translation of Albert Camus’s 1947... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-04-19 17:25:44 UTC ]
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Everyone’s favourite stormtrooper will be developing new movies with Netflix – one of several creators who have turned to enabling the work of othersToni Morrison knew a thing or two about stories. In 1994 she saw the “political correctness debate” as being about “the power to be able to define.... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-03-15 18:32:03 UTC ]
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The US experience of watching sport online should ring alarm bells for those who prize the Premier League’s ability to bring people togetherIn the late 1960s, the American author and tech seer Richard Brautigan wrote lyrically of “a cybernetic meadow / where mammals and computers / live together... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-12-02 18:49:42 UTC ]
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Social media cannot ensure they only publish truths. But what about deliberate falsehoods designed to damage?Are social media companies responsible for the lies their users tell? Both the obvious answers, “yes” and “no”, are clearly wrong. Complete responsibility is a bad idea, and impossible in... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-05-27 17:25:07 UTC ]
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The social media advertising giants of the web have great power. When they admit this, they will come under pressureThe decision by Facebook to ban six prominent figures of the alt-right movement, along with Louis Farrakhan, from both Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram, is a significant... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-05-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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