Is the era of the professional writer drawing to a close? At least one contemporary British author thinks so. In a recent article, the Globe and Mail quotes UK writer Ewan Morrison’s contention that advances from traditional publishers have declined so much in recent years that he is practically working for free. Morrison sees self-publishing, book piracy, rampant e-tailer discounting, free writing online, and the “free culture” movement as killing off traditional writing and publishing. While consumers may be happy to get a lot of stuff for free, he insists, they’re killing our culture, and “There will be no...

In the UK, culture minister Ed Vaizey is holding a review into e-book lending in libraries, and is receiving advice from a number of industry lobbies. The All Party Parliamentary Group on libraries has proposed requiring physical visits to the library to check out e-books, and also that any money received from charging a patron for the checkout should be used to finance other library services. However, the Booksellers Association has objected to the latter proposal, saying that such revenues should be used to buy more books only, and requested direct inclusion into the talks: ...

I hadn’t been aware of this until just today, probably because it happened on the other side of the Atlantic, but in recent weeks there’s been a bit of a furor over Amazon UK listing several e-books for only 20 pence each. It turns out, though, that this isn’t Amazon’s “fault”—Amazon is only pricematching Sony. Sony recently launched its own UK e-book store with 20 pence promotions on ten e-books, which will apparently change over time—including, oddly enough, titles from Macmillan, whose American branch was so concerned about Amazon’s $9.99 e-book prices eroding the value of e-books that it...

On Felicity Wood’s blog, Julia Crouch writes a guest post about her experiences writing on trains, using it in part as a metaphor for the e-book experience, and partly to discuss a publicity project she did in which she wrote a complete short story over the course of her train journey to and from a writers’ convention. The story, Strangeness On A Train, has been published as a free eBook on Amazon and Apple, as well as being printed up into samplers to be handed out on the Harrogate train and at the Harrogate Crime Writing...

The Telegraph reports that a hotel in Newcastle is experimenting with replacing the Gideon’s Bibles in its rooms with Amazon Kindles pre-loaded with a copy of the Bible instead. These hotel Kindles will also have the ability to download a copy of any other religious text costing £5 (US $7.84) or less, or buy e-books that will then be added to their bill. (I would hope the e-books would also be added to that person’s own Amazon account so he could read them later at home, too, but the article doesn’t make that clear.) The hotel’s general manager, Adam...

It came as a surprise a couple of months ago when pre-eminent UK bookstore chain Waterstones announced it would be entering a partnership with Amazon to sell Kindles. Now that the shock has worn off, Publishing Perspectives reports, a number of UK publishers and bookstores are speaking out (mostly anonymously on the publishers’ part, of course) about it. The consensus among publishers tends to be backhanded admiration of how shrewd the deal is for Waterstones, while at the same time recognizing it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the industry. One publisher compares it to “Vichy France,”...

The Bookseller and FutureBook report on a recent meeting of affiliates of the UK’s Booksellers Association at which representatives of three e-book companies—Kobo, Anobii, and Gardners—pitched their respective product frameworks. Unlike the American Booksellers Association (whose own IndieCommerce platform was mentioned in the letter I mentioned last night), the UK’s BA is soliciting multiple non-exclusive schemes for its members, who may choose to offer any or all of them in any combination. Kobo’s affiliate scheme offers booksellers the chance to sell Kobo devices, and receive an affiliate’s cut of any e-books that Kobo owner buys from then on, even...

The UK’s Daily Mail surveyed 1,863 UK readers on their e-book reading habits and determined that 34% of the readers surveyed admitted to using e-readers to conceal that they were reading erotic literature, 57% to hide reading children’s books such as Harry Potter, and 26% to hide their science fiction habit. (Science fiction is the Rodney Dangerfield of literary genres—it gets no respect, sometimes even from its own fans.) All in all, counting overlap in categories, 58% of the readers admitted using the device to “hide” reading something they wouldn’t want others to see them with. So much...

The Bookseller has a brief report on a London roundtable in which some publishers and booksellers sounded a warning about library e-book lending. Waterstones m.d. James Daunt said that library e-lending could be disruptive to bricks-and-mortar booksellers. “If you can download a book for free and read it, why would you want to own it?” Daunt further noted that booksellers have had things “extremely easy” for a long time, and have lost focus on “the basic discipline of retailing.” He suggested that there is an opportunity for booksellers to learn to improve their financial focus and learn to run...

FutureBook has a piece looking at the rate of e-book adoption in the UK, which is still a few years behind the US but growing year to year. The first half of the article is a confusing flood of statistics, but it seems to conclude that, as of the end of 2011, e-book sales accounted for about 10% of the total book business among trade publishers in the UK. By comparison, Hachette stated that in the USA e-books made up 28% of its adult trade sales in the first quarter of 2012. The article also looks at what the...

They’re nowhere near as big as Tor, but the Bookseller reports that Duncan Baird Publishers, a UK publisher of illustrated mind, body, and spirit and cookery books, has announced it will be removing restrictive digital rights management (DRM) from 150 of its current and 80 future e-book titles in order to provide a better experience for readers. It is not clear from the Bookseller piece what percentage of Duncan Baird’s overall catalog this represents. Duncan Baird is writing to authors to tell them of its decision, which has met with mixed response. “There are some authors...

A court in the UK has issued an order compelling UK ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay, the BBC reports. Previously, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) music lobby group had asked the ISPs to do so voluntarily, but they had declined to do so without an actual court order. Critics of the move warn that it could represent the start of a slippery slope toward censoring sites promoting other causes or behaviors. ISP Virgin Media told the BBC that content providers need to offer a carrot as well as a stick: "As a...