To support Potty, Fartwell and Knob, Extraordinary but True Names of British People, which was a UK bestseller in 2007, the author Russell Ash has created some entertaining little gizmos on his admirable website.
Colin Cotterill has had an interesting kind of life. In 1972 he took a gap year and never came back. He has been a teacher in Australia, a teacher trainer in Vietnam and a social worker on the Burmese border. He has worked on UNESCO literacy projects in Asia, set up an NGO dealing with child prostitution in Thailand and has established a programme to bring books into Laos. Read more
Brian McGilloway’s Borderlands has just been published in America. For the veteran of eighteen months of submissions and 20 rejections, this must have been a great moment. Read more
Hilary Mantel is an intriguing example of an author who has written for many years and only recently achieved a breakthrough. Not only did she win the Booker Prize last autumn, but her book Wolf Hall has become the fastest-selling Booker winner since records began in 1998. Read more
The announcement that Gillian Flynn had been declared Specsavers International author of the Year last week was only the latest accolade awarded to her. Read more
With the publication of Inheritance Christopher Paolini has brought to a triumphant conclusion his epic sequence. In the UK this book had a first week sale of 76,000 copies and the series as a whole has sold 1.2 million books to date in the UK. It had a first printing of 2.5 million in the US. Read more
Darren Shan’s first book, Ayuamarca, was published in 1999 by Orion and didn’t have much impact. The sequel, Hell's Horizon, sold fewer copies than the first. Read more
Rosie Alison has just been shortlisted for the all-female 2010 Orange Prize for fiction with her first novel, a great vindication for this author whose first book was many years in the writing. Read more
'I'm very reassuringly honest. It's a job as well as a calling. It's my living - I'm the chief breadwinner in my house. My husband is retired, he supported me through the two decades while I wasn't making enough to live on, and was doing all kinds of things to do with writing to survive - judging competitions, running workshops, appraising manuscripts.
‘My settings of Europe and English visitors weren't really doing it for them, so we decided Scotland would be good. I thought an island would be great, because it's a small community, and it's an opportunity for my main character to get away from it all. The team at HarperCollins have been so supportive and enthusiastic... Read more
For the past five years or so, I've read books on my phone. The practice started innocently enough. I write book reviews from time to time, and so publishers sometimes send me upcoming titles that fall roughly within my interests. Read more
The Guardian calls Irish-Indian poet Nikita Gill "Britain's most-followed poet on social media"-she has 780,000 Instagram followers and 180,000 TikTok followers, and her Instapoetry has been reshared by the likes of Khloe Kardashian, Alanis Morissette, and Sam Smith-and she has published seven volumes of poetry and two novels in the U.K. But she is far less known on this side of the pond. Read more
Nikkolas Smith knows a thing or two about book bans. The illustrator has created five picture books over the last three years-four of which have been yanked off library shelves. There's I am Ruby Bridges, about the civil rights icon; That Flag about the confederate flag; Born on the Water, which explores slavery; and The Artivist which features a child supporting trans kids.
Simon & Schuster has acquired the largest Dutch publishing group Veen Bosch & Keuning, including all of its publishers in the Netherlands and Belgium, as well as sister companies Thinium and Bookchoice.
The Publishers Association (PA) has criticised the government's response to a House of Lords report on AI, saying that it has failed to make "any tangible commitments to protect the creative industries against mass copyright infringement".
'I'm very reassuringly honest'
‘My settings of Europe and English visitors weren't really doing it for them, so we decided Scotland would be good. I thought an island would be great, because it's a small community, and it's an opportunity for my main character to get away from it all. The team at HarperCollins have been so supportive and enthusiastic... Read more