Latest News for Writers and Readers – April 2018

Kim - Writer

7 years ago

This is my compiled list of the latest news for writers and readers, from the publishing world.

Reading

Book Awards

The Man Booker Prize Longlist is out. The shortlist comes out on April 4th.

I havent actually read any of the longlisted novels yet, but i am keen to get my hands on Han Kang’s novel The White Book, Go Went Gone by Erpenbeck about refugees and The 7th function of language by Binet of France. I will update this page as I read some of these books and let you know my thoughts.

By all accounts, this is a more diverse list of authors than in previous years.

Calls for American authors banned from Bookers

This is an article from the UK news. Some publishers have claimed that, due to the US being such a big market, it gives them an unfair advantage.

The UK Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist is out. The shortlist will be released on 23rd April and the winner announced on 6th June 2018.

I am on the waiting list for a copy of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and I’m very excited to get my hands on it as I’ve heard so much about it; mostly good, some bad.

Also The Idiot entranced me, simply by its title, so I’ve put a hold on that one at the local library.

The Hugo Awards finalists are out. I have added Kim Stanley’s New York: 2140 and Lafferty’s Six Wakes to my TBR pile. Most of the other novel nominees are part of a series.

Writing

Business/industry

Don’t discount audio books if you are self-publishing.

Audiobooks have been the fastest growing part of the digital publishing industry. The United States continues to be the biggest market for the audio format and in 2017, there was over $2.5 billion dollars in sales, which is a slight increase from the $2.1 billion generated in 2016.The Big 5 Publishers captured 45% of the audiobook market. Independent publishers had 5% [Source:goodereader.com]

Nearly half of all listeners are under 35. The most popular genres were Mystery/Thriller, then Sci fi/Fantasy, then Romance. [Source: audiopub.org]

Online book sales are growing with two categories in the lead.

The book sales for Amazon increased 46% to $3bn (£2.33bn) in the first half of 2017, while e-book sales increased 6% to $750m. [Source: One Click Retail]

The top category for print book sales in 2017 was children’s books.

The next top print book category on Amazon.com was religion and spirituality, which saw a 55% year-on-year increase.

Academic

I found an interesting article this week about the dangers of English becoming the common language of research articles. It talks about what is lost in translation as well as the article then often not being published in the local language as well, thereby reducing the availability of local knowledge. Have a read of it here: Publishing in English hurting Scholarly World.

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