FutureBook

One of the things I like about the Agency Model is the faintly sinister, Bond-villain ring it always had to it. If only such fantasies were anywhere near the truth which seems to have been altogether more embarrassing. Rosa Kleb would be kicking more than a few publishing executives in the shins right now I suspect. Read more »

It is fantastic to see signs of a fight back against Amazon with the news that Barnes & Noble and several other North American booksellers are refusing to stock Amazon published books. Of course the fact that the blows have been struck by retailers and not by any publishers is hardly surprising.

What will be interesting to see is what, if anything, publishers do about it? Will they lend any support or will they pull up their skirts, jump on a chair and scream while the cat and mouse game plays out around them? Read more »

The current UK number one hardback fiction title, Private Games by Patterson & Sullivan, selling a less than overwhelming five thousand copies is selling through Amazon at £9.49, with a Kindle edition at £6.39. The previous week’s number one, Stuart MacBride’s Birthdays for the Dead, is currently selling for £7.00 in hardback and £6.99 in Kindle.

Private Games is at thirty six on the kindle charts. Birthdays for the Dead at a hundred and twenty six. There are a grand total of three titles in the Kindle top fifty with prices over five pounds. Read more »

It is good to see one publisher giving voice to the blindingly obvious: that “Amazon have got publishers in their sights and they’re going to kill us”. Of course it is disappointing that these comments are both anonymous and originate in the US, because if the view from over there is doom laden, it is positively apocalyptic here. Read more »

There has been much comment and excitement about the size of the Pippa Middleton advance, with a number of commentators eager to see it as a sign of something or other decadent or inappropriate.

Personally I am not so sure. I don’t mind seeing publishers get their chequebooks out and in historical terms the reported sums are not that all huge anyway. Above all it is good to see signs of confidence in a publisher. Read more »

As we near Christmas and the publishing industry gears itself up for the, by now, semi traditional, post December 25th spike in e-book sales as all those lovely kindles are unwrapped under the tree it is just beginning to be possible to peer into my crystal bauble and see how the electronic future might be shaping up. Read more »

Quite rightly, JK Rowling has decided to cut her publishers in on Pottermore. Publicly her publisher, Bloomsbury, are ‘delighted to be partnering’ Rowling. Privately I can imagine there’s been a certain amount of gritting of teeth – tempered with relief that she did not cut them out of the deal entirely. That would have been wrong, Bloomsbury have done a brilliant job of publishing her. Read more »

If the rumours are true (and they would seem to be) and JK Rowling has sidelined the publishing industry to put the Harry Potter series into electronic formats under her own imprint then today marks the start of a new era in publishing. Read more »

I do like to see a bandwagon being jumped on and after the collective sharp intake of breath when Sonia Land published the Catherine Cookson catalogue on e-book there were many who predicted that if Random House wouldn’t quite be sending round Seal Team 6 their reaction would be swift and severe. Read more »

Many of the stories about e-books posted either here on Futurebook or on the Bookseller website quickly attract comments from a zealous group of people who believe passionately that publishers are sticking their heads in the sand when it comes to e-books (and drm) and that anything and anyone that stands in the way of piracy will be forced to walk the plank of history. Read more »