Wednesday, 3 December 2014
In the UK, Penguin has created a Penguin Hotline to offer gift book recommendations, reports Shelf Awareness. The hotline, staffed by more than 300 Penguin employees, was inspired by the Butterball Turkey...

Tuesday, 2 December 2014
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton (Picador) has been named as the Waterstones Book of the Year. Burton’s novel was chosen from a shortlist of eight that included Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road...

Tuesday, 2 December 2014
Jeffery Deaver’s most recent work The Starling Project will not be printed but ‘was conceived, written and produced as an original audio drama for Audible’, reports the New York Times....

Tuesday, 2 December 2014
In the UK, Waterstones managing director James Daunt has revealed in an interview with financial website This Is Money that the bookselling chain is ‘now close to breaking even’. The...

Monday, 1 December 2014
The shortlist for the US $50,000 (A$59,000) 2015 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature has been announced. The shortlisted titles are: The Lowland (Jhumpa Lahiri, Bloomsbury), The Mirror of Beauty (Shamsur...

Friday, 28 November 2014
The winners of the 2014 Irish Book Awards were announced at a ceremony in Dublin on 26 November. Debut novelist Mary Costello won Novel of the Year for Academy Street...

Thursday, 27 November 2014
In the US, Simon & Schuster is expanding its ebook lending program to all public libraries by dropping its ‘Buy It Now’ merchandising requirement to participate in the program, reports...

Thursday, 27 November 2014
In the UK, literary agency Curtis Brown is launching an online book group that offers readers a chance to read pre-publication books from the agency’s ‘most exciting new and undiscovered...

Thursday, 27 November 2014
The winners of this year’s UK National Book Awards have been announced. Among the winners are UK Author of the Year David Nicholls (Us, Hodder) and International Author of the...

Thursday, 27 November 2014
Debut Irish author Colin Barrett has won the £10,000 (A$18,467) Guardian First Book Award for his short story collection Young Skins (Jonathan Cape), reports the Bookseller. Barrett’s book, which follows the lives of...

Wednesday, 26 November 2014
PEN America has launched a new prize for emerging writers for ‘an unpublished work of nonfiction that addresses a global and/or multicultural issue’. The PEN/Fusion Emerging Writers Prize, worth US$10,000...

Wednesday, 26 November 2014
Goodreads has published data analysis that shows its members prefer to read books by writers of their own sex, reports the Guardian. The data showed male authors accounted for 45...

Wednesday, 26 November 2014
In the US, author James Patterson has launched a new campaign called ‘Save Our Books’ to increase support early childhood education and generate more funding for public libraries and librarians,...

Tuesday, 25 November 2014
The French Booksellers Association has launched a national campaign for independent bookshops, reports the Bookseller. The campaign, which runs until the end of 2015, includes a logo to build recognition...

Tuesday, 25 November 2014
In the US, judge Denise Cote has granted final approval to a settlement deal in Apple’s ebook price-fixing case, reports Publishers Weekly. Under the terms of the deal, however, Apple...

Monday, 24 November 2014
In the UK, Penguin Random House has announced it will create a new PR director role for the children’s division, following the departure of Adele Minchin. The Bookseller reports that...

Monday, 24 November 2014
In the US, Hachette (HBG) has agreed to buy independent publisher Black Dog & Leventhal (BD&L), reports Publishers Weekly. Black Dog & Leventhal, which specialises in ‘creative’ nonfiction and illustrated titles,...

Friday, 21 November 2014
In the UK, Penguin Random House children’s book imprint Ladybird will no longer publish books labelled ‘for boys’ and ‘for girls’ in response to a campaign against gender-labelling, reports the...

Friday, 21 November 2014
In the US, the winners of the 2014 National Book Award have been announced. The fiction award was presented to Redeployment (Phil Klay, Canongate), a short-story collection about US soldiers who...

Friday, 21 November 2014
Ebook subscription service Oyster has launched a free online journal called the Oyster Review, which will publish original essays, reviews and interviews on books and writing, reports Publishers Weekly. Oyster’s...

Thursday, 20 November 2014
In the US, the Queens Library in New York has developed its own ereader app for Android and iOS, reports Good Ereader. The app gives users access to the library’s...

Thursday, 20 November 2014
In the UK, Oxford University Press (OUP) has partnered with education technology start-up ‘accelerator program’ Emerge Education, reports the Bookseller. As part of the partnership, OUP will sponsor a working...

Wednesday, 19 November 2014
In the UK, protest group Amazon Anonymous has launched a campaign urging consumers not to shop at Amazon this Christmas, reports the Bookseller. The group is asking shoppers to sign...

Wednesday, 19 November 2014
In the UK, the shortlists for the 2014 Costa Book Awards have been announced. The books shortlisted in the novel category are: The Lives of Others (Neel Mukherjee, Chatto &...

Tuesday, 18 November 2014
Penguin Random House has launched a new audio app called ‘Volumes’, reports Galleycat. The free app allows readers to listen to audio clips from authors including Jodi Picoult, Sophie Kinsella...

Monday, 17 November 2014
How to be Both (Ali Smith, Hamish Hamilton) has won the £10,000 (A$17,890) Goldsmiths prize, a literary award established to ‘reward fiction that breaks the mould or opens up new...

Monday, 17 November 2014
Three prizes for mystery books—the Barry Awards, Anthony Awards and Macavity Awards—were presented at the Bouchercon 2014 World Mystery Convention: Murder at the Beach, held at Long Beach California from 13...