Fiction by subscription
What if you could pay £20 a year and get two good new books in return, with your name printed in the back of them? It sounds good to me, which is why I’ve just subscribed to And Other Stories, a new...
View ArticleWhat comes after Fifty Shades?
After the record-breaking success of the Fifty Shades trilogy, publishers are desperately trying to answer the multi-million dollar question, what comes next? What will all those millions of readers...
View ArticleSomething wholesale
I suspect that few – if any – of you have heard of Bertram Books. You could be forgiven for thinking that they are a lesser-known series of P.G. Wodehouse novels, but in fact Bertram Books is a book...
View ArticleWhen ‘boycott’ isn’t quite the right word
Boycott Amazon was the message from Margaret Hodge MP in last weekend’s Observer. This comes in the wake of new revelations about just how little UK tax is paid by Amazon and other corporate giants...
View ArticleHow To Pronounce It – U and non-U. A guide for George “innit” Osborne.
Sometimes, in the joyous lotteries we call ‘secondhand bookshops’, you find a volume that takes you back to a different era because of its physical appearance. Sometimes you find one that adds to the...
View ArticleI hope and pray that bookshops will survive – somehow
When writing a novel, there comes a time, in the process of gestation and planning, when other books are required. It is almost as though, Middlemarch-like, your little attempt at writing cannot be...
View ArticleThe civil war for books: where is the money going?
This is a transcript of a speech given at this year’s London Book Fair: Over the course of the last few years, it has come to feel that we bookish types are stuck in our very own world war one...
View ArticleSave me from this hipster bookshop
My father used to own a rambling provincial bookshop. He was once asked to direct a customer to some esoterica. Peering over his copy of The Spectator, he directed the punter to a far-flung corner of...
View ArticleWaterstones deserves to be judged by its bookshop cover-up
Let’s get one thing clear: bookshops are a good thing. Waterstones — even putting aside the abandonment of its apostrophe…
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