Hatching a brand-new bookshop: interview with Pigeon Books
Melissa J. Davies describes the origin story of Pigeon Books, currently Southsea’s tiniest bookshop. It’s a pop-up shop at the moment, and hopes to have…
Booksellers
The importance of covers in commercial fiction
Phoebe Morgan is an editor at HarperCollins specialising in commercial crime, thrillers and women’s fiction. She is also an author and her first book, The…
Tips for running a bookshop event
Sheila O’Reilly is the Events Manager Village Bookshop in Dulwich Village. She is a bookseller with over 18 years’ experience of running bookshops and author…
Death of digital overstated in recent report
The Publishers Association numbers show consumer ebook sales have collapsed by 17 per cent, but physical book sales are up by 8 per cent[1]. The media took…
Behind the scenes at Blackwell’s: What publishers can learn from a bookselling icon
Last week I was lucky enough to receive a VIP behind-the-scenes tour of Blackwell’s flagship store in Broad Street, Oxford. The point of the exercise,…
Heffers bookshop: Nominate your most characterful bookseller or customer [winning blog idea November]
Each month BookMachine offers a community member, with great ideas, the chance to write on the site. This month, publisher and author of ‘This book…
BookGig: The ‘publisher agnostic’ initiative launched by HarperCollins
A new initiative hit the book world this week: BookGig, ‘all the events from the authors you love’. What’s interesting about that? Well, it’s one…
10 tips for bookselling from the shop floor
Chicken and Frog Bookshop is the only independent children’s bookshop in Essex. The family owned and run store opened its doors in October 2012. We…
Seth Godin’s three charges against publishers
“As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers, so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.” – Cyril Connolly Publisher-bashing is…
Startup snapshot: Read Dog
Kate Cygan and Michael Wray are an entrepreneurial minded couple with insatiable reading habits. They recently moved to Denver, CO and are working on visiting…
Why small publishers sell more books with Nielsen Book2Look
Small independent publishers and self-published authors need to maximize the impact of their books and ensure they are easily found on the Internet. Ralph Möllers,…
What can publishers learn from Pokemon Go?
Long considered nothing more than a gimmicky fad, it turns out that augmented reality (AR) is actually alive and well. At least that’s the case…
Savvy business snapshot: Bookspeed
Bookspeed specialise in building the perfect range of books and gifts for retailers. Lewis Dawson is Commercial Director and is responsible for all buying and…
The Zoella Book Club: interview with Amy Alward
Earlier this month WHSmith launched Zoella’s Book Club in partnership with blogger and vlogger Zoe. Here Norah Myers interviews Amy Alward, one of the eight…
Four players in the book business with the power to rewrite some of the rules
The news came recently that ReaderLink has purchased Anderson News. Those two companies have been the leading suppliers of books to the mass merchandisers: primarily Wal-mart,…