Since the middle of 2011, the London Evening Standard has been focused on increasing literacy in the UK with their "Get London Reading" initiative. To date, they've raised £1 million (about $1.5 million) and helped more than 2,000 children. Now Barnes & Noble and Nook Media have joined the campaign, along with several large UK publishers (Hachette UK, HarperCollins, Penguin and Random House). Last month, Barnes & Noble donated 100 Nook Simple Touch readers to the program, which has allowed volunteer reading helpers to use the e-readers during their work. [caption id="attachment_85168" align="alignright" width="300"] Photo credit: London Evening Standard[/caption] I just checked out...

  British crime and thriller writers are being bumped off by their American counterparts, according to the latest league table of the Most Borrowed Adult Fiction Titles in UK libraries, released today by Public Lending Right on the eve of the UK's National Libraries Day. No less than 17 novels by U.S.-based crime and thriller writers appear in the Top 20 Most Borrowed Adult Fiction Titles list. Nine of them were written—or co-written—by James Patterson, including the Most Borrowed Title of 2011-12, 10th Anniversary. For the sixth year running, James Patterson also retains his crown as the UK’s Most Borrowed Author. In total, 10 U.S.-based authors writing in the...

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...

From The Bookseller: The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is poised to announce an independent cross-trade review into e-book lending, which could potentially "break the deadlock" on the issue, The Bookseller has been told. Last week Labour's shadow culture minister Dan Jarvis called for "an effective and credible taskforce" to be created to explore e-book lending in libraries, to "consist of librarians, authors and publishers and be chaired by an independent expert". His calls followed a meeting on library e-lending which took place on 3rd July between Little, Brown c.e.o. Ursula Mackenzie, Penguin c.e.o. Tom Weldon, Random House UK's deputy chairman Ian Hudson...

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...

From the Labor Party site: Dan Jarvis MP, Labour's Shadow Culture Minister, has written to Ed Vaizey calling for him to produce a report exploring the future of e-book lending, and said:“Following my question in the Chamber on the 14th June, I was pleased to meet with Ed Vaizey and a number of publishers to discuss the issues relating to e-book lending,...

From Employeebenefits.co.uk: HarperCollins has introduced a digital device loan scheme that enables employees to purchase an iPad, laptop or non-contractual mobile phone for their personal use. The scheme offers the publishing firm's 900 UK staff an interest-free loan to buy a device, capped at a maximum spend of £500. Employees then repay the loan over a 12-month period through a salary sacrifice arrangement. The scheme is aligned with the company's focus on moving towards a digital business. More at the site....

Here's part of an analysis piece from The Register: Analysis Photographers, illustrators and authors will be amongst those to lose their digital rights under radical new proposals published by the Government today. New legislation is proposed that would effectively introduce a compulsory purchase order, but without compensation, across an unlimited range of creative works, for commercial use. Millions of amateurs who today post their images to Flickr and automatically receive the full protection of the law, would also lose, unless they opted-out. The changes involve orphan works reform - floated as Clause 43 of the Digital Economy Act in 2010...

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...