Robert McCrum on books + Booksellers | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/series/robert-mccrum-on-books+booksellers Index en-gb Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2017 Mon, 27 Mar 2017 20:45:18 GMT 2017-03-27T20:45:18Z en-gb Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2017 The Guardian https://assets.guim.co.uk/images/guardian-logo-rss.c45beb1bafa34b347ac333af2e6fe23f.png https://www.theguardian.com Bookselling heads for a merry Christmas https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/dec/06/bookselling-merry-christmas For all the kvetching about the digital era, the books world's vital signs are looking very healthy<p>At the end of a week in which Google announced the launch of its long-awaited e-reader, and at the end of a year in which the digitised text swept all before it (sales of ebooks in the USA now approach $1,000m (£638m) you might think that the game was up for traditional publishing, or that the conventional book was history.</p><p>Not a bit of it. Three items of current, unrelated book news suggest that now – as never before – the printed word remains in rude good health, despite the merchants of doom.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/dec/06/bookselling-merry-christmas">Continue reading...</a> Books Culture Publishing Booksellers Ebooks Technology Mon, 06 Dec 2010 17:17:28 GMT http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/dec/06/bookselling-merry-christmas Photograph: Bruno Vincent/Getty Images An Amazon.co.uk employee at its Milton Keynes depot prepares a Christmas order. Photograph: Bruno Vincent/Getty Images Photograph: Bruno Vincent/Getty Images An Amazon.co.uk employee at its Milton Keynes depot prepares a Christmas order. Photograph: Bruno Vincent/Getty Images Robert McCrum 2010-12-06T17:17:28Z Waterstone's has forgotten what bookselling is about https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/sep/06/waterstones-bookselling Bookshops are crucial infrastructure for any free society. The retail chain, which once exemplified this, seems to have lost touch with this<p>Whatever happened to Waterstone's? Like many bookshop lovers, and fans of Tim Waterstone's achievements in the 1980s, I have watched the decline of a great chain with dismay. How could it have all gone so wrong?</p><p>Something has been rotten in the state of Waterstone's for years; last week I got a tiny glimpse into the malaise that lingers at the heart of the organisation. Sometimes, as a journalist, you get a unexpected insight from the smallest, apparently most insignificant, of moments. Here's what happened:</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/sep/06/waterstones-bookselling">Continue reading...</a> Waterstones Booksellers Books Culture Mon, 06 Sep 2010 11:27:02 GMT http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/sep/06/waterstones-bookselling Photograph: Graeme Robertson Not that open ... Waterstone's bookshop in Islington, north London. Photograph: Graeme Robertson Photograph: Graeme Robertson Not that open ... Waterstone's bookshop in Islington, north London. Photograph: Graeme Robertson Robert McCrum 2010-09-06T11:27:02Z Borders's demise is not the end of the book world https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/nov/30/borders-end-book-world The trade is going through convulsive changes, but some trends in British books actually point upwards<p>It's tempting to see <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/26/borders-closure-stores-amazon">the end of Borders</a> as another consequence of the hurricane that is hitting the usually tranquil boulevards of the British book world. Tempting, but wrong. Borders is a casualty of market forces and internal mismanagement. Its demise is essentially similar to the fate, before it, of Dillons, Hammicks, Books Etc and Ottakars.</p><p>The truth is that this country, with a population of about 60 million, offers the ambitious bookseller a rather small market for books, despite the growth in higher education, and one that can only sustain a single big American-style book chain. At the moment the name of that chain is Waterstone's, and even Waterstone's is struggling, having become a byword for shoddy retailing. In the short term, it will pick up some extra business from Borders refugees. Eventually, it may well face the same inexorable pressures as its now defunct competitor.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/nov/30/borders-end-book-world">Continue reading...</a> Booksellers Borders Business Culture Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:06:31 GMT http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/nov/30/borders-end-book-world Photograph: Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty Images Things are looking up? ... Borders. Photograph: Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty Images Photograph: Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty Images Things are looking up? ... Borders. Photograph: Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty Images Robert McCrum 2009-11-30T11:06:31Z The Booker Prize | Robert McCrum https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/13/booker-prize-2009-robert-mccrum The 2009 Booker shortlist is fiercely English, inclined to the historical narrative and will reassure British booksellers<p>Now that the Booker Prize has turned 40, after years of dinners and high living, it's time for a health check. This global trophy certainly bears little resemblance to the tweedy British prize that came on the scene in 1969, allegedly after a game of golf.</p><p>In its first decade, prize business was settled in the smoke-filled rooms of London clubs, where it remained resolutely insular. Commonwealth writers were eligible, but only two winners, VS Naipaul (1971) and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975), hinted at the potential of Abroad. The Booker usually got no closer to India than JG Farrell's <em>The Siege of Krishnapur</em> (1973).</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/13/booker-prize-2009-robert-mccrum">Continue reading...</a> Booker prize Books Culture Booksellers Booker prize 2009 Fiction Sat, 12 Sep 2009 23:06:26 GMT http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/13/booker-prize-2009-robert-mccrum Photograph: Murdo Macleod/Observer Colm Toibin. Photograph: Murdo Macleod Photograph: Murdo Macleod/Observer Colm Toibin. Photograph: Murdo Macleod Robert McCrum 2009-09-12T23:06:26Z Robert McCrum: America's giant bookshops put the 'e' in reading https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/aug/16/robert-mccrum-ebooks-kindle E-readers reach their 'iPod moment' as Amazon and Barnes &amp; Noble battle for their share of the US and – soon – British markets<p>I don't possess a Kindle or even a Sony Reader, but I won't be clinging to ink and vellum much longer. The long-awaited "iPod moment" for books, to which this column has often referred, has arrived. Not on these shores, true, and not yet in Europe, but across America this summer there's suddenly all the evidence anyone might need to declare the appearance of a trend. E-reading has reached its tipping point.</p><p>Not only has the second version of Amazon's Kindle matured into an attractive, discreet and user-friendly tool, but Barnes &amp; Noble has just launched its own e-reader in direct competition with Amazon. Those in the know say that it hopes to cash in on the anticipated surge in electronic reading that will follow the September launch of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/aug/16/robert-mccrum-ebooks-kindle">Continue reading...</a> Ebooks Publishing Books Culture Technology Amazon Booksellers Kindle Barnes & Noble E-readers Sat, 15 Aug 2009 23:05:14 GMT http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/aug/16/robert-mccrum-ebooks-kindle Robert McCrum 2009-08-15T23:05:14Z
https://www.theguardian.com/books/series/robert-mccrum-on-books+booksellers/rss
www.theguardian.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-13
16319
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:IMEXGTH76QSCEBCFK4SIPRNH5DTCDA6I
<urn:uuid:2ca20c92-307a-4d0b-a445-3df68bfebc7c>
2017-03-27T20:45:18Z
151.101.33.111
sha1:4LMRJFPOFMTG34IJHWN7UXZADBAYRQEX
<urn:uuid:1b8bc895-071a-49d6-b401-9fb28e030dc6>
https://www.theguardian.com/books/series/robert-mccrum-on-books+booksellers/rss
response
<urn:uuid:277af56f-13f3-4518-a409-1f6ec47729a9>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-13
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for March 2017
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf