In a challenging market, more publishers saw sales decline than increase in 2016 Although total revenue of the world’s 50 largest book publishers topped $50 billion in 2016, last year was not an easy one for global publishing giants. Less than half of the top 50 publishers posted revenue gains in 2016, with the balance reporting sales declines. One of the companies that had the toughest year was P

The 70-year-old classic doesn’t look a day over nine. On May 21, 1945, author Astrid Lindgren gave the first Pippi manuscript to her daughter Karin on her 10th birthday (the book was published in November of that year). Karin originally came up with Pippi’s name and asked her mother to write a story about her. People all over the world celebrated the birthday of the classic strong female protagoni

Matthew Carl Strecher is the author of three books on Haruki Murakami: Dances with Sheep: The Quest for Identity in the Fiction of Haruki Murakami, Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Reader's Guide, and the upcoming The Forbidden Worlds of Haruki Murakami. Strecher ranks his favorite of the master's books. Murakami Haruki is world-renowned as a novelist of magical realist fiction. His

Digital Manga Inc., a California-based manga publisher specializing in the yaoi genre and digital delivery, will close Digital Manga Direct, its wholesale division. The move follows DMI’s announcement in November that it is suspending all of its print publication until June 2013, while continuing to offer digital editions of its publishing list. Digital Manga Direct was launched by DMI to sell ove

The TOME artbook has already raised nearly 400% of its goal—more than $72,000—on Kickstarter. Is Kickstarter the #2 Graphic Novel Publisher? By Todd Allen Jul 10, 2012 Last summer, we asked if Kickstarter was really the third largest independent publisher of graphic novels, based on volume. In the last year, crowdfunding (the technical term for Kickstarter’s business model) has increased in popula

The recent layoffs at Tokyopop, the U.S. manga publisher founded by Stu Levy in Japan and L.A. in 1996 and 1997, have turned a spotlight on the house’s decline over the last few years. Battered by the economy, a global decline in manga sales and now the Borders bankruptcy, Tokyopop is a smaller company, much reduced from the days when it published as many as 500 books a year and virtually defined

Publishing Pros Band Together to Root Out Censorship Publishing Professionals Against Book Bans, a new resource-sharing community affiliated with Authors Against Book Bans and geared toward industry insiders, will host its first virtual town hall, “Book Bans and the Art of Protecting Authors,” on October 28. more... Bookshop.org Begins E-book Sales in the U.K. Following the U.S. launch in January,

ReaderLink, B&T Call Off Deal In a joint statement issued Friday afternoon, ReaderLink and Baker & Taylor announced they have “mutually” agreed to terminate ReaderLink’s proposed acquisition of the troubled library wholesaler. more... Judge Gives Preliminary Approval to Anthropic Settlement Following a September 25 hearing, U.S. District Judge William Alsup preliminarily approved the $1.5 billion