Date Archives October 2014

Under the Tripoli Sky by Kamal Ben Hameda

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Peirene Press is known for publishing contemporary European literature in translation, but its latest offering takes us a little further afield, to Tripoli in the 1960s. Author Kamal Ben Hameda lives in Holland and writes in French, but this novella is set squarely in the Libya of his youth. As a child growing up in England in the 1980s, the only time I ever heard about Libya was in news stories about Colonel Gaddafi. These days the news stories are different, but still it’s a country I know very little about beyond… Read More

Latest UK book stats

Literary events The writing process 12 Comments

Came across some interesting stats on UK book sales in the latest issue of The Author magazine from the Society of Authors, and thought I’d share a few of them with you: Sales of physical books fell 5% in 2013, while sales of digital products rose 19% Digital now accounts for 33% of fiction sales and 7% of non-fiction/reference (and 15% of publishers’ total business) Paperback sales have fallen 23% since 2008 The average selling price of a paperback was £5.46 in 2013, compared with £5.83 in 2008 UK publishers’ total… Read More