Have you ever been to a literary festival, or a book festival? They’re different from book fairs – those are industry-only, business affairs where rights deals are struck and conferences are held.

by Rebecca Lee
When you can buy books from aisle 2 of your weekly supermarket sweep, why bother going into a bookshop? Or why can’t you just go on Amazon?
A regime change at Waterstones is planning …

Books take time to make. As you will know from all those doomed university essays (why is 2,000 words so many?), word counts are pesky things and books need at least 30,000. We also need …

Paper rules.
I’m not talking about in books themselves – digital is coming, get used to it – I’m talking about in publishing. In the office. In our daily working lives.

The writer’s road from initial idea to book-in-hand-of-reader is long and arduous. But we have come to the end of the beginning of the ‘Inside Publishing’ mini-series on How One Gets Published.

by Rebecca Lee
Are you feeling tough? Because what’s coming might seem pretty brutal.

So, you’ve written a book, you’ve researched agents to submit it to, carefully followed their submission guidelines and sent off your precious …

So, you’re a writer. You have written something you want other people to read. You would like it to become a book, with a cover and pages and on sale in bookshops (physical or virtual). …

I suspect, dear readers, there are one or two of you who are writers too. Am I right? So, I’m thinking, it’s only fair that I offer a bit of an insight on these pages …

‘The Road’, ‘The Lovely Bones’, ‘Alice in Wonderland’, ‘Percy Jackson’ and ‘A Single Man’, how come all films this year seem to be based on books? Why do the film people make so many movies …

I have a confession to make. I am a reformed TV book snob.

In the past, if I went to get my summer holiday ‘3 for 2’s, and there was a ‘Richard and Judy …

Or should that be ‘everyone’? I know there’s a difference, but which one is right? If they’re both ‘right’, which one is better? What do I really mean?

So some things never change, but then sometimes an unchanging thing can be quite surprising in itself. I am not often taken aback by The Sunday Times Culture magazine Books section, but there, right before …

There is a society for young publishers, you know. Ingeniously, it’s called ‘The Society of Young Publishers’, or the ‘SYP’. They run speaker meetings, social events, and contribute to industry bodies as well as just …

Last week brought the news that the Borders chain of bookshops has gone into administration. I don’t see how anyone was surprised, since its downfall was caused by its own customers.

The book is dead. Long live the book.

Revolution makes for great books: Dr Zhivago, Les Miserables, Cold Mountain.
But a revolution in books – is that good for business?
The publishing industry is poised on the …