Blogs

Where is our next read?

Georgia Henry campaign executive

Recently the way we find out about new titles has changed. We spend less time standing on train platforms next to a poster of your... Read more

Lockdown diaries: the book designer

Carmen Balit Designer at Atlantic Books

The weekend before the government announced the lockdown I was due to go to Bristol to visit a friend, and a few days earlier we’d... Read more

The long view

By Philip Jones

Editor at The Bookseller

The Bookseller has been sold just three times in its 162-year history; the first time in 1998 by the founding Whitaker family to VNU (now... Read more

The realities of being an Instagram poet

Blake Auden Poet

I have been writing poetry most of my life. Encouraged by my English teacher as a child, I used writing as a way of dealing... Read more

What is a bookshop for?

Mark Thornton Mentor at Unwin Charitable Trust

The Zoom call was going well. I liked the technology on show, and I felt bookshops could definitely benefit from using it. It provided a... Read more

Lockdown diaries: the marketing executive

Hamza Jahanzeb Marketing executive at Icon Books

I usually don’t travel back to my hometown in Lancashire unless it's to visit family and friends - and that isn’t often, as I regularly catch up with them on their... Read more

Reading across the generations

Lachlan Brown Founder of Best By The Numbers

The reading habits of people in the UK can provide golden insight for publishers. But they're all too often clouded by assumptions and anecdotes rather than... Read more

Publishing the full Spectrum

Lydia Wilkins Journalist

For a long time, I felt like I had been failed by publishing. After a diagnosis of Aspergers Syndrome - now Autism Spectrum Disorder (or... Read more

Lockdown diaries: the librarian

Zoey Dixon Librarian at Lambeth Libraries

Some people are surprised when I say I didn’t find lockdown that bad. I had some practise (although less restrictive of course) when I stayed... Read more

Lockdown diaries: the book club founder

Melissa Cummings-Quarry Co-founder of Black Girls Book Club

It happened so suddenly. One moment I was at work, bleaching everything in sight, using extra splashes of Dettol - that infamous Caribbean Aunty staple with... Read more

Ignore, focus or avoid? How authors are tackling COVID-19

Gillian Harvey author

Many of us enjoy getting lost in historical novels, often set in periods of history when great change was taking place. Contemporary fiction is usually... Read more

How to promote books by black authors

Hephzibah Kwakye-Saka Senior campaigns manager at Riot Communications

As a black publicist with more than seven years in culture and entertainment publicity, I have sat in many all-white creative meetings where the genuine... Read more

How coronavirus made me fall in love with bookselling again

Katie Clapham bookseller at Storytellers, Inc.

It’s a strange thing, when you realise, you’ve fallen out of love. It’s kind of embarrassing, really. Noticing that things are messy, and that you... Read more

2020 sideswipe

By Philip Jones

Editor at The Bookseller

Future historians of the book business will have a problem when they look back on 2020. Read more

Place writing in a pandemic

David Cooper and Rachel Lichtenstein, co-directors at the Centre for Place Writing

Since the turn of the millennium, whether responding to globalisation, the rise of digital technologies, or the climate emergency, many writers have become increasingly preoccupied... Read more