Is the branded author really our savior? Or is he distracting publishers from new stories and undiscovered talent?
Hilary Mantel
Increasingly fixated on the stars of today, such as Hilary Mantel and JK Rowling, publishers are neglecting the experimenters who could save their industry tomorrow: the mid-list writers.
The tickets sold out months ago. Long before the admiring reviews of the stage adaptation of Hilary Mantel's novels Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies hit the press at the end of last week, theatre-goers were in no doubt they wanted to see six hours of blazing Tudor intrigue.
HarperCollins UK has seen a 66% drop in profits for the year ending 30th June 2013, according to results filed with Companies House. Pre-tax profits at the publisher dropped from £8.3m in 2012 to £2.8m in 2013, a decline of 66%. Profit after tax stood at £1.07m, falling 80% from £5.3m. HarperCollins has attributed the decline in profits to costs incurred by a change in its distribution system.
British book bloggers and tweeters are enthusing over the ‘First Editions, Second Thoughts‘ auction at Sotheby’s of print first editions annotated by their authors, including JK Rowling, Hilary Mantel, Philip Pullman, Nick Hornby and Ian McEwan, to be sold off in aid of English PEN. The Guardian has put together a beautiful clickable interactive gallery [...]
The post Sotheby’s auctions off annotated first editions appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.
Acclaimed author Hilary Mantel caused quite the stir after she defined Middleton as "a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung" whose "only point and purpose being to give birth." She also described the princess as "plastic" and "designed to breed."
The comments came during the multiple Booker Prize-winner's hour-long lecture for a London Review of Books event at the British Museum on February 4th. They have created a media storm in the UK - and yet the headlines hide a more complex discussion…
One starts out pleased to be long-listed for the prize, and ends up feeling anything other than winning is failure I'm never likely to find out what it's like when your novel is up for the Booker Prize. But I now know what it's like when your husband's...