One of the great things about the internet for publishers is that it gives them a chance to communicate directly with readers. Gone are the days of those “cut out and post” coupons, which would appear at the back of books to be mailed off for the publisher’s latest catalogue. Now we can go online, see what else the publisher’s doing, find out about their upcoming releases, and even buy their books directly.

These direct sales can be an important revenue boost to publishers—they don’t have to share the price of the book with a bookshop—and offering customers a discount is an obvious way of increasing sales.

But now, just as Amazon.com has come under fire for allegedly trying to strongarm Print on Demand publishers into using Amazon’s own POD system, Amazon.co.uk has been revealed to be getting up to some mischief of their own, and it could threaten the future of publishers’ direct sales (Keep reading …)

Okay crops up a lot in fiction writing, particularly in dialogue and first-person narrative. Where does it come from, and how should it be spelled? (Keep reading …)

There’s really no need for me to make a lengthy post about the semicolon; The Guardian has done it for me.

I can, at least, single out the paragraph that actually explains how to use it: (Keep reading …)

Wealthier readers of this blog might be interested in this news item on the BBC website.

Of course, buying the desk won’t make you a better writer, but it will mean you’re never short of something to talk about in restaurants (Keep reading …)

Nobody knows how to spell email. You might say, ‘nobody knows how to spell e-mail,’ but you’d be wrong. Or would you?

The issue of email vs. e-mail clearly raises blood pressures across the world. At the time of writing, the spelling question is right at the top of the Wikipedia article on e-mail. Meanwhile, a group calling itself the Email Experience Council has declared the official term to be email. They’ve even got a petition (Keep reading …)

Irregardless is a word that people love to hate. In fact, many would say that it isn’t a word at all, but rather the hideous result of a collision between irrespective and regardless (Keep reading …)

Last month I finally managed to make my book lover’s pilgrimage to the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company. Almost—but not quite—the legendary bookshop that first published James Joyce’s Ulysses (the original shop, owned by Sylvia Beach, was at a different location and closed for good in 1941), the modern Shakespeare and Company is still a unique bookshop.

The shop is staffed at least in part by a team of enthusiasts, who work there in return for the use of one of the beds that are tucked discreetly between the bookcases. (Keep reading …)

Although all writers are different (or so we like to believe), there are a few reference books that are all but indispensable to all of us. As a first post in the Writer’s Bookshelf category, here’s a list of three books that no writer can do without. Whether you’re a novice writing a science fiction epic, or an experienced professional writing a pacy crime thriller, the following should always be within arm’s reach: (Keep reading …)

Peanuts is something you come back to. You revisit it in progressive stages, as you would an elderly relative; when you’re a child, they’re just a warm, friendly hug and the biscuits. When you’re a teenager they’re somebody who complicates family gatherings and about whom things are said in the kitchen, and then later they become an incredibly fascinating person with a unique life and a hundred stories…which you’ll never hear, because they’ve just passed away. (Keep reading …)

I’ve broken the habit of a lifetime by finally reading an issue of Granta in the year—although not the actual season—in which it was published. I don’t feel too bad about coming to this particular issue six months late because, presumably, it’s intended to last us for the next ten years. This is Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists 2007. (Keep reading …)