Fantasy author accuses the online giant of using its market dominance ‘to control what we write and what we read’The grande dame of fantasy Ursula K Le Guin has weighed in forcefully to the debate about Amazon’s role in publishing. In a blogpost on the site Book View Cafe, entitled “Up the Amazon with the BS Machine, or Why I Keep Asking You Not to Buy Books from Amazon”, the American author has spoken out against what she describes as the company’s increasing influence not only on the bookselling market but also on which books get published, promoted and read. Her fierce conclusion is: “Every book purchase made from Amazon is a vote for a culture without content and without contentment.”After an analysis of how the “Best Seller Machine” has worked in the last decades, Le Guin writes that the online retailer is changing the culture of publishing. The Amazon model, she writes, is “easy salability, heavy marketing, super-competitive pricing, then trash and replace”. The ideal book, under this template, is “a safe commodity, a commercial product written to the specifications of the current market, that will hit the BS list, get to the top, and vanish. Sell it fast, sell it cheap, dump it, sell the next thing.” Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2015-06-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon is said to be involved in a scandal in Germany, with a documentary accusing the retailer... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-02-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A new bi-monthly magazine, World News Publishing Focus, has just been launched by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) to provide members and other readers with a professional international publication focused on the ind ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2013-02-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Time Warner is in talks to sell a large portion of its Time Inc. magazine division, including People, InStyle and Real Simple, according to a report Wednesday afternoon by Fortune.Headed for Meredith, Berkshire Hathaway or nowhere new after all?Fortune is itself a Time Inc. magazine but reported... Continue reading at Crains New York
[ Crains New York | 2013-02-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jennifer 8 Lee needed programming help to launch her publishing startup Plympton, but she didn’t have the cash. So what did she do? She got creative. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-02-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Literary Platform and Bath Spa University have partnered on a new bursary for partnering... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-02-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Mimi Spencer and Michael Mosley's intermittent fasting guide, The Fast Diet (Short Books),... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-02-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Penguin-owned Author Solutions Inc (ASI) has opened a self-publishing imprint called Partridge in... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-02-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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With ebooks’ share of unit sales rising from 14% for the first nine months of 2011 to 22% for the same period in 2012, the biggest winners among retailers were Amazon and dedicated ebookstores and digital download sites. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2013-02-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Mimi Spencer and Michael Mosley's intermittent fasting guide, The Fast Diet, was comfortably... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-02-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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By incorporating trillions of calculations, Bookish.com, the new online bookstore financed by Hachette, Penguin and S&S, promises to apply Big Data to book discovery. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-02-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Egmont UK is the latest children's publisher to launch a new imprint, Red Shed, publishing... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-02-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Egmont UK has commissioned a new research programme as part of a wider initiative by the company... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-02-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon saw record sales growth of 22% to $21bn (£13bn) over the Christmas period, with the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-01-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Pushkin Press is launching a children’s imprint, Pushkin Children's Books, for publishing works that have had success overseas but have not found a publisher in the UK. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-01-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Whatever Kindle sales were in Q4, they could have been better had Amazon not sold out of its flagship e-reader. Continue reading at AllThingsD
[ AllThingsD | 2013-01-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Independent publisher Short Books has scored its first ever Official UK Top 50 number one. The... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-01-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon is reportedly readying an advertising push for displays on Kindle e-readers after pitching... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-01-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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HarperCollins is launching a new education publishing division in India which will mark its... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-01-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Curtis Brown has teamed up with Kobo to launch a short story competition, to be judged by author... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-01-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Major publishers are taking wildly different approaches to resolving the woes surrounding ebook lending at libraries: they're experimenting with both the short-yet-cheap subscription as well as an expensive option to pay only once for perpetual use. Sure enough, we're now seeing the middle road.... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2013-01-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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