Archive for the ‘ Book Industry News ’ Category
The American electronics giant Apple was investigating damaging allegations last night that Chinese workers making its new iPad device were subjected to such “inhumane” treatment that some of them took their own lives by jumping off factory roofs.
Exhausted KYE workers assembling Microsoft products slumped over their desks during a break in their 15-hour shift
It has been placed equal bottom in a list of 100 of the country’s biggest high street chains, matching the poor customer rating of Currysdigital.
The rankings were collected by the consumer group Which? following an online survey of more than 14,000 people in February and March.
Participants scored the stores on 15 factors including price, service, store experience and product quality.
WH Smith, which has a… Continue reading
SAN FRANCISCO — Even as audio versions of best-sellers fill store shelves and new technology fuels the popularity of digitized books, the number of titles accessible to people who are blind or dyslexic is minuscule.
A new service being announced Thursday by the nonprofit Internet Archive in San Francisco is trying to change that. The group has hired hundreds of people to scan thousands of books into its digital… Continue reading
After 150 years of steady sales, the romance between Heathcliff and Cathy has started flying off the shelves thanks to a generation of teenagers discovering the book through the Twilight saga – a trilogy of books by Stephanie Meyer, which have been turned into hugely popular films, staring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart.
The Twilight books, which have helped… Continue reading
Chain bookshops and book clubs were the biggest retail losers in 2009, with value and volume sales declining, according to data by Book Marketing Limited.
At this week’s Books and the Consumer conference, BML research director Steve Bohme said the big winners in 2009 were bargain book chains. Volume sales in the sector increased by 11% year on year and by 4% in value terms. Bargain bookshops now have a volume… Continue reading
Publishers and retailers should work together against excess discounting, in a bid to improve the perceived value of books, delegates at this week’s ASP (academic, professional and specialist booksellers) conference heard yesterday (10th March).
The 39th annual conference, which kicked off yesterday afternoon (10th March) and is being held in cloudy Bournemouth, heard a similar request made by a number of speakers. The keynote speech, made by outgoing chairman… Continue reading
TV and music impresario Simon Cowell and author Sir Terry Pratchett have written to MPs and peers urging them to vote in favour of tougher internet piracy measures included in the digital economy bill as “a matter of urgency”.
Cowell and Pratchett are among five signatories from across the UK’s creative industries to a letter designed to put pressure… Continue reading
Once upon a time, the only books that existed were books copied by hand by monks and scribes and sold to the very rich for the equivalent of $5000 or $6000 a book. Then along came the printing press, and all the monks and scribes had to find another way to earn their bread.
Once upon a time the only books that existed were books on paper made by… Continue reading
Dick Francis, the champion jockey turned best-selling thriller writer, has died at the age of 89, his family said today.
His son, Felix, said he was “devastated” as he paid tribute to his “extraordinary” father.
Francis, from Oxfordshire, the author of 42 novels, was “rightly acclaimed” as one of the greatest thriller writers in the world, his spokesman said.
Francis, who was living on the Cayman Islands in his later years, died… Continue reading | 1 Comment
The UK online payments market will experience unprecedented growth in 2010, as the total volume of transactions is expected to exceed 20 billion and the size of a typical online payment continues to fall, hitting just £70 by December 2010… Continue reading