News from the US, UK and worldwide publishing trade press
By Mark Garcia-Prats In hopes of extending the positive attention about Africa stemming from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, The Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artist is sponsoring a writing project called Pilgrimages. The idea for the series is that during Africa’s first World Cup, 14 African writers will be sent to [...]
This article originally appeared in our printed BEA Show Daily, which you can read in its entirety here. By Emily Williams With Spain as the Global Market Focus this year, we thought it worthwhile to look at the existing market for Spanish-language books in the US. The Hispanic book buying market is estimated at about $1 billion, [...]
By Edward Nawotka Like him or not, Andrew Wylie is certainly savvy about managing his reputation. In April, the UK Guardian offered this profile and now Harvard magazine visits the man known overseas for the nickname “The Jackal.” The piece tracks his progress from Harvard undergrad to his position at the top of the publishing food [...]
By Edward Nawotka Last year at this time on Publishing Perspectives profiled Ramy Habeeb, founder of Kotobarabia, the world’s first publisher of Arabic-language e-books. In “Kotobarabia’s Arabic E-Books Extend Borders” Habeeb describes a situation where censorship mean many books never saw the light of day and book distribution for 80% of the publishers in the Arabic-speaking world [...]
In the UK, the Publishers Association’s data collection scheme, PA Sales Monitor (PASM) reports that book sales from January to March, compared with last year, grew “marginally by volume from 84.3m to 84.4m units, but the valuefell by 3.3% from £287m to £278m. Export sales actually grew in value by 2.4% from [...]
By Edward Nawotka Earlier this week the European and International Booksellers Federations held their annual meeting in Brussels with the theme “Breaking the Rules to Survive.” Speakers included Kelly Gallagher, Vice-President of Bowker, Geert Joris, Director of Boek.be, and Fergal Tobin, newly elected President of the Federation of European Publishers. You can read a press release [...]
By Olivia Snaije PARIS: The presence of literary agents in France continues to be a hot topic, hot enough so that the regionally-funded French book “observatory”, Le MOTif, has just released an in-depth study entitled “The Literary Agent in France: realities and perspectives”. It follows the publication of numerous articles in the press and a 6-page [...]
By Edward Nawotka In the latest issue of ESPRIT magazine, Pascal Fouche, bibliographer and editor of the three-volume Dictionnaire encyclopedique du livre, discusses the changing definition of the book in the age of digitization, largely in favor of the argument that a lower rate of V.A.T. — 5.5.% in France — not be extended to e-books: [...]
By Edward Nawotka Anyone who has followed our news coverage knows that we think overseas publishers would do well by taking a longer look at the central and Latin American markets. One of the key gateways into the southern hemisphere of the Americas is the annual Guadalajara Book Fair, one of the best — or at [...]
By Wuping Zhao SHANGHAI: Shanghai hopes be the first Chinese city to promote all e-textbook campus in five years, according to a statement from Shanghai Municipal government on June 6, 2010. An official from local government said the city’s Educational Committee is experimenting with an e-book campus, which started at the beginning of this year. The committee [...]
