The Guardian view on fiction vending machines: attention seekers | Editorial

If they succeed in distracting commuters from their smartphones, short story dispensers will be a welcome addition to the landscapeCan fiction miniatures dispensed through slots lure commuters away from their smartphone apps and social media feeds into the imaginary worlds created by authors including Virginia Woolf and Anthony Horowitz? We are about to find out. The French company Short Édition, which already has short-story vending machines in France, Hong Kong and the US, arrives in the UK this week, unveiling its first three terminals in London. Henceforth, travellers through Canary Wharf will have the option of forsaking news, email, Football Manager 2019 and every other temptation their handheld device can offer in favour of a story on a scroll of paper, printed on demand for free.It’s a modern twist on the idea of a free bookstall or swap scheme, already familiar to rail travellers across the UK. The cost is borne by businesses, which are encouraged to install the machines as a way of improving customer experiences and preventing people from getting cross or bored. The novelty lies in the dispenser, but also the brevity and portability of the reads on offer, which range from one minute to half an hour, and can also be viewed online. (Mr Horowitz has been commissioned to pen a 60-second whodunnit for the launch.) They demand far less time and energy than a book – in many cases, less effort to read even than a chapter – and will take up next to no space in a bag.... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2019-04-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Emerging writers prize launched by Hachette and Guardian Australia

$10,000 award in memory of publisher Matthew Richell announced at Emerging Writers’ festival in Melbourne, which will also be a partner on the prizeA new Australian literary award has been established in memory of Matthew Richell, the Sydney publisher who died in a surfing accident in 2014 at... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2015-05-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Alexander McCall Smith bags comic fiction prize

Alexander McCall Smith has won this year’s Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party, published by Birlinn imprint Polygon. This is the first time McCall Smith, the author of No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series published by Little, Brown, has appeared on the comic... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2015-05-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Galley Beggar presses into non-fiction

Galley Beggar Press (GBP) will launch a non-fiction list in early 2016 with a memoir by novelist Toby Litt and a title from début writer Megan Dunn.  Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2015-05-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Religion Update 2015: The Future of Christian Fiction

Despite the much-discussed 15% drop in Christian fiction print unit sales from 2013 to 2014, as reported by Nielsen BookScan, publishers aren’t sounding the category’s death knell yet. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-05-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Indies strong on Jerwood Fiction longlist

Independent publishers have taken the majority of spots on the 15-strong longlist for the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize 2015. The prize celebrates great British fiction and each year awards a group of eight writers with £5,000 each. This is the first time the prize has made public a... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2015-05-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook Instant Articles: BBC News and Guardian sign up to initiative

New initiative, which also involves BuzzFeed and the New York Times, speeds the process of loading news articles on the social networkBBC News and the Guardian are the first UK media companies to sign up to a new Facebook initiative that will transform the way users read news articles.Facebook... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2015-05-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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At Times, L'Oréal Is Getting 90% Video Ad View Rates

L'Oréal has evidently found a video advertising vendor in Mediabong it's very high on. Mediabong—which is announcing a $5 million Series B round of funding today—said it achieved a 90 percent "video-through rate" for L'Oréal in a recent five-week ad campaign across various publishers.... Continue reading at AdWeek

[ AdWeek | 2015-05-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Agency view: The (few) publishers that get mobile ads right

Publishers get a bad reputation for their mobile ads, which often intrude on or confuse the user. But some get it right, say agencies. BuzzFeed's ads mirror the site's shareable editorial content. Mashable, ESPN and NY magazine strike a good balance of content to ad space. The Weather Company... Continue reading at Digiday

[ Digiday | 2015-05-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Transworld pair top fiction charts

Lee Child and Paula Hawkins have given Transworld two chart-toppers in this week's bestseller lists. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2015-05-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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PRH creates one Children's editorial team

Penguin Random House UK Children’s today (6th May) announced it is creating one editorial team in what it described as "the next chapter in the evolution of the PRH UK Children’s division". Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2015-05-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Why Uproxx is betting big on Facebook video (hint: 20 million views in a month)

Woven Digital, the publisher behind Uproxx, views Facebook as its primary video-distribution vehicle. It drew more than 20 million views across 10 videos in April, far more than on YouTube or its own site. While Facebook has yet to introduce a video ad product for publishers, Woven CEO Scott... Continue reading at Digiday

[ Digiday | 2015-04-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Zoella loses 'editorial consultant'

YouTube star Zoella, real name Zoe Sugg, has revealed she is writing the sequel to her debut novel Girl Online (Penguin) without the help of an “editorial consultant”. Girl Online was written with the assistance of Siobhan Curham, although Curham’s involvement with the book was not initially... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2015-04-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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How PopSugar went from zero to 14 mil. Facebook video views a month

PopSugar produces dozens of videos each week for its audience of millennial women, and then it tailors them for each distribution platform. The publisher posts longer videos on YouTube and on its own site, while Facebook gets more clips and flashy text graphics, because the platform autoplays... Continue reading at Digiday

[ Digiday | 2015-04-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Non-fiction book club for Radio 2

A new non-fiction book club on Claudia Winkleman's weekly BBC Radio 2 "Arts Show" is to launch this autumn, as part of The Reading Agency partnership with the station. The book club follows on from the Radio 2 Book Club on Simon Mayo's show, and a children's writing competition called 500 Words... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2015-04-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Horobin to join Bonnier Publishing Fiction

James Horobin, previously group sales, marketing and publicity director at Simon & Schuster, is to join the recently launched Bonnier Publishing Fiction division as executive director with responsibility for sales and marketing. Horobin, who left S&S last month, will take up his new... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2015-04-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Thrillers, killers, spillers: Aussie pulp fiction of the 40s and 50s – in pictures

Passion! Mystery! Crime! After the Australian government banned the import of American pulp magazines at the onset of the second world war, publisher Frank Johnson stepped into the market with a flurry of crime, adventure and romance novels. Drawn from his archives, a collection of cover art,... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2015-04-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Ward joins HarperCollins as fiction art director

HarperCollins has hired Claire Ward as fiction art director, joining from Transworld where she has worked for 25 years. Ward, who will begin at HarperCollins in July, has designed covers for titles such as Before I Go to Sleep, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, The Book Thief and The Girl... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2015-04-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sweeney Named Editorial Director of Franciscan Media Books

The publishing veteran and author of seven books about St. Francis of Assisi has been tapped to head Franciscan Media Books, the nonprofit publishing arm of the Franciscan Friars of St. John the Baptist. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-04-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Murakami shortlisted for Indie Foreign Fiction Prize

Authors Haruki Murakami, Erwin Mortier and Daniel Kehlmann have made the shortlist for the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Also shortlisted for the £10,000 award are two writers whose work has been translated from Spanish into English for the first time: Tomás González and Juan Tomás... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2015-04-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A View of What “Our Possible Media Futures” Might Look Like, Out of The New York Times’ R&D Lab

Last night’s news about news orgs publishing directly to Facebook wasn’t a surprise, exactly — we’ve known this was in the works for months — but it’s been a good excuse to think about the p ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher

[ Editor & Publisher | 2015-03-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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