Blogs

Be more Welsh

Penny Thomas Co-founder at Firefly Press

When Book Trust asked Firefly to support the UK Children’s Laureate campaign to increase funding for primary school libraries, I was delighted. Not just because... Read more

Choosing bookshops

Nels Abbey Author and founder of Black Writers Guild

One of the best opportunities I’ve been granted this year simultaneously turned out to the be one of the most challenging: judging the trade categories... Read more

Disinformation Prime

Jared Shurin Marketing strategist

With the potential for a safe, healthy return to normalcy on the horizon, vaccine uptake has been in the spotlight. For some, there’s a genuine... Read more

Day 81,901

By Philip Jones

Editor at The Bookseller

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is fond of talking about his 26-year-old firm’s “Day 1” culture. Read more

No budget? No sweat

Georgia Henry Campaign executive at Rocket

It’s no surprise that marketing budgets have been cut this year. With the upcoming months still being incredibly uncertain, many pubishers will be finding that... Read more

Our Covid year

Niall Mansfield Managing director at UIT Cambridge/Green Books

We started as a computer company – our biggest project was getting The Financial Times onto the internet in 1997 – but we wrote and... Read more

Ready, steady...

Emma Corfield-Walters Owner of Book-ish

This time last year, I wasn't sure how long our bookshop in a small market town in mid-Wales would survive. Alongside many indie bookshop owners... Read more

The rise of Black speculative fiction

Kadija Sesay

The blockbuster success of “Black Panther” in 2018 was probably the global breakthrough that showed the extent of the popularity of Black speculative fiction. Although... Read more

Book fair season - but not as we know it

Michele Young Rights director at Pan Macmillan

It is as though ‘Bologna-time’ is hard-wired into children’s publishers; the smell of spring in the air makes us think of our new publishing, new... Read more

Dearth of a Black salesman

Rochelle Dowden-Lord

For one of my final school essays, I chose to analyse a whisper of a book. Upon confirming my choice, I found out that my... Read more

Opinion: Reaching Black readers

Bengono Bessala

The marketing of books to readers of colour is often restricted to titles by writers of similar backgrounds, but who ‘the reader’ is must be... Read more

What the Black Writers’ Guild did next

Elijah Lawal

One of the things that Black people know to be true is that when we lift up our voices to celebrate our joy, share our... Read more

Cheers to the new vanguard

Sir Lenny Henry

The children’s books I was raised on, and decades later those I read with my own kids, spoke little to the world I knew—and that... Read more

Where are all the Black editors?

Jasmine Richards

This piece was going to be about the art of editing and how vital this is for career progression. It was going to talk about... Read more

Power trumps representation

Marianne Tatepo Guest editor

The Black Issue is about just that: the power of diasporic collaboration and the multitudes of Blackness. It is a celebration of difference without the... Read more