In the style of so many 90s TV shows, the short story is making a comeback, and if you think Captain Planet is cool as hell, you ain’t seen nothin’. While huge publishers like Random House, and… booksellers, Amazon, are now discovering something most of us have known for years (that short fiction is the greatest writing there is) there are a bunch of publishers out there who have been promoting the form for longer than I’ve been alive.

The Unbounders: Justin Pollard (standing) John Mitchinson and Dan Kieran (photo by Rachel Poulton)

A few months ago we were invited to speak at a Futurebook conference organised by the Bookseller. The event was split into two parts. The first half included speakers from traditional publishers sharing their ideas of how publishing could and should change, and the second was billed as talks by people from outside the established publishing world. Therein lies the problem traditional publishers face. The number of ‘outsiders’ are growing, intent on their own kind of change.

Amazon have done well from the Kindle – a contraption that, for some, seems to look like a relic from 10 years ago, running books produced in a format from 20 years ago. For others though, it’s the peak of human achievement in the field of plastic, e-ink and clumsy button-based technology, justifiably colonising handbags (yes, mostly handbags) across the planet.

But what now for the Kindle? Here are 5 things Amazon might do next.

Helen Stevens, Marketing and PR Director for the Society for Editors and proofreaders (SfEP), talks about communication.

Despite many of us being able to work from home, nothing beats face-to-face interaction, and one of the aims of the SfEP is to facilitate that.

Here’s the idea – it’s about 9.30 on a Friday night at a busy venue somewhere in London. Inside and outside the atmosphere is bustling, the drinks and conversation are flowing, shenanigans are ensuing, there’s a bar (or three) doing a brisk trade.

Ok, so we’ve done this bit before.

But this time around, lining the room are a multitude of market stalls – actually, the venue looks more like Greenwich market than a London pub. The stalls are manned by traders from independent publishing houses selling their latest books, expanding over a drink on why revelers should buy their latest title.

This is BookMachine’s first ‘Best of’ post – as such, I wholeheartedly hope you find it to be outrageously wrong.

Has there ever been one of these lists you’ve looked at and thought: you know what, that’s spot on, they’ve really nailed that one there?

Nope? Good. That would be mighty boring.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, by Seth Grahame-Smith

First up, this one is rapidly becoming a cult classic, who knew that the great man was also handy with a stake?

Literary Death Match is a competitive literary night which began in New York and has spread to 33 cities worldwide, including London, Cardiff, Dublin and Glasgow. Here founder Todd Zuniga tells all…

Wakatake Onikoroshi: Fuel for “Bright Literary Ideas”

Literary Death Match was hashed out one early NYC evening, over spicy tuna rolls and hamachi sashimi. The question was how to make readings fun? The usual readings, we discovered, were: one reader shined, one went way too long, the other was lazily plodding through a blog entry they’d defecated earlier that afternoon. So, our sake-fueled yammering basically asked: how do we get only readers who shine? Tall task, until ComedyCentral.com’s Dennis DiClaudio jokingly said the words, “Literary Death Match.”

A mighty impressive tale of starting out as an online publisher – Clare Hey, founder of Shortfire Press  shares her experience… what do you think?

Alex Painter, Marketing and Development Director at Editorial Training, discusses editorial standards and gives some tips – if you’re also a stickler for detail, make sure you read right through to the end…

The BEBC is Britain’s largest specialist English Language Teaching bookseller. Here, John Walsh, Managing Director shares  all… from the days of the Net Book Agreement, to the more recent threats from Amazon…