It’s been an intense week here in publishing.  Publishers Weekly reports that the London Book Fair, just concluded, may have been a bit lower in terms of overall attendance, but those who did show up certainly came prepared to do business.  In New York, Random House announced the largest ever first printing for a book – 6.5 million copies for Dan Brown’s sequel to The Da Vinci Code – and whatever you think of Mr. Brown’s literary merits, that’s got to be good news for publishing all round.

But no matter how optimistic the industry is starting to feel, the elephant in the room, of course, is the economy itself.  The British budget this week announced tax increases and  massive public borrowing, pushing the country’s debt to 80 per cent of gross domestic product – for comparison,  America’s own debt, although soaring,  is estimated to be no more than 74 % of GDP.

The cruel reality is that we’re still very much living in the worst recession for 60 years.  Litopia is certainly fed up of reporting bad news, but… don’t kid yourself –hard times will be with us for years yet, and prudent authors will  plan accordingly.

Both LITOPIA AFTER DARK and LITOPIA DAILY will continue to be essential listening for writers in the turbulent times ahead.

On tonight’s show…

• We examine the growing worry that your computer files could soon become unreadable
• Going against the e-book trend: print-on-demand is making a very definite come-back
• What publishers can learn from Lara Croft and her games buddies

And

• TheBookChannel.tv… We tell you how you can easily get on TV with your book… but – there’s a price!

Joining Peter on the panel tonight are:

• From England’s west country Litopia stalwart Dave Bartram
• From Fort Lauderdale, Florida, leading lawyer, author and Litopia Daily’s newshound, Donna Ballman
• We bid a very welcome return to author John Quirk from the isle of Man
• And – he’s an award-winning children’s author, was the Children’s Editor on Publishing News and he’s here with us again tonight– he’s our very special guest, Graham Marks!

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Download the show as mp3 file

Photo by bronx.

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