Amazon to receive £3.2m tax rebate after business rates appeal Amazon is set to receive a multi-million pound tax rebate following a legal row over business rates at its Rugeley warehouse in Staffordshire. The online retailer will receive a refund of around £3.2m as a result of changes to the rateable value of the warehouse…
Bound books will not be included in US tariffs, admits PA The United States tariffs on EU exports will not include bound books, the Publishers Association has admitted, after originally branding the move “completely unacceptable”. On Friday, the UK PA said printed books from the EU were going to be targeted by US tariffs. It…
Bristol University to house historic copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover Bristol University will house a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover that once belonged to Sir Laurence Byrne, the judge who presided over the landmark 1960 obscenity case, keeping the historic edition in the UK. In May, the government slapped an export ban on the book and English PEN…
Publishers sue Amazon’s Audible over speech-to-text feature Major US publishers have filed a lawsuit against Amazon’s audiobook company Audible in a row over a new speech-to-text feature which they say is a violation of copyright law. The lawsuit, filed by Association of American Publishers (AAP), was filed in response to recent public statements from Audible,…
China crackdown on maps sparks major production delays A new censorship crackdown in China has led to Beijing officals checking all books being printed in the country for maps, causing delays of up to eight weeks for production teams and derailing launches for books featuring any kind of map. Chinese censors have long taken a…
International sales ‘increasingly important in 2019’, predict publishers Publishers will increasingly look to international territories for growth this year in the face of a stable but flat domestic market, according to industry leaders giving The Bookseller their predictions for what 2019 holds for the trade. Yet paradoxically the terms of many international trading relationships are currently uncertain…
After almost 600 booksellers withdrew 3.5m books from the secondhand marketplace in support of countries dropped by the website, it apologises for a ‘bad decision’ An “extraordinary and unprecedented” global protest from antiquarian booksellers has forced the Amazon-owned secondhand marketplace AbeBooks to backtrack on its decision to pull out of several countries. AbeBooks had told…
Honours for Waterstone, Ishiguro, Beard and Calder Tim Waterstone, founder of the eponymous bookshop chain Waterstones, has been recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List with a knighthood for “services to bookselling and charity”. Author Kazuo Ishiguro – awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last year – has also received a knighthood, for services to literature. “I’m feeling absolutely…
Readers encouraged to ‘ditch burdensome books’ for WBN New research by the Reading Agency suggests the UK is a nation afflicted with “book-block”, with many readers deciding to give up on books after struggling through a difficult title. The survey, commissioned to mark World Book Night on Monday 23rd April, reveals more than half of…
Amazon unveils international shopping app Amazon has launched an “international shopping experience” through an app which allows customers worldwide to browse and ship more than 45 million products from the US. The Amazon Shopping App is offered across mobile devices in five languages, including English, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, German, and Brazilian Portuguese, altogether offering customers the…