Publishers' Weekly piece about ebook file fomrats....

Just in time for the 200th birthday of Dickens, there are three new illustrated books based on his life and the books he wrote....

(Brief notices from the Washington Post)

and I would want to add (less recent, but still superb)

Brought to you by The Omnivore, the Hatchet Job of the Year Award will be presented to the author of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past twelve months.

It aims to raise the profile of professional critics and to promote integrity and wit in literary journalism.
The judges:

Suzi Feay
Rachel Johnson
Sam Leith
DJ Taylor

The winner, announced on 7 February 2012, will receive a year's supply of potted shrimp...

Read The Omnivore's Manifesto (which ACHUKA applauds) to see why they have launched this award...

The Hatchet Job of the Year Award is for the writer of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past twelve months.

It aims to raise the profile of professional critics and to promote honesty and wit in literary journalism.

Newspaper book pages are on borrowed time. Readership is dwindling, review space is shrinking, reviewers are paid half what they were twenty years ago. The professional critic has yet to draw his last breath, but there's no mistaking the death rattle.

We've not stopped reading - the UK book market was worth over £3bn in 2010 - but we are increasingly going elsewhere for literary recommendations. According to a survey by The Bookseller, only 15% of people said they found out about new books and authors from a newspaper or magazine review, with growing numbers relying on Amazon, blogs and Twitter. A single tweet from Stephen Fry will have an infinitely greater impact on a book's sales than a dozen broadsheet reviews.

The chief cause of this sorry situation is, of course, the decline in newspaper readership. But plummeting circulation just makes it even more urgent for literary pages to prove they're still relevant.

We need professional book reviewers. We need people who know what they're talking about, whose voices we recognise and trust, even though we might not always agree with them. With more books being published than ever, you could argue that the hunger for authoritative advice has never been greater.

Editors have a duty to feed this hunger. This means asking why many people who like books think the book pages aren't for them. It means challenging notions that professional criticism is inward-looking and self-serving. It means making sure book reviews are not simply informative, but entertaining.

Hatchet Job of the Year is a crusade against dullness, deference and lazy thinking. It rewards critics who have the courage to overturn received opinion, and who do so with style. Most of all, it is a public celebration of that most underpaid and undervalued form of journalism: the book review.

Another quite negative children's fiction review from this past Saturday's Guardian Reivew....

Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine, reviewed by Simon Mason

The past 10 years have seen an outburst of children's novels with autistic characters, particularly in the US, where Mockingbird won the prestigious National Book award. There may be a difference between British and American approaches to the subject, however. For British readers the classic of the genre remains The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. But where Mark Haddon's book is sui generis, Erskine's seems as if written with America's annual "Autism Awareness month" in mind. In the end, like Caitlin's drawings, Mockingbird is a neat outline in black and white. It could have done with more colour. SIMON MASON

Joyce Barkhouse, the Nova Scotia-based children's author who wrote Pit Pony, has died. She was 98.
...
Pit Pony, the story of a boy and his horse working in the coal mines of Cape Breton, was her most popular book, drawing letters from people living in mining communities and from horse lovers across Canada. It was published in 1990.

In 1997, it was made into a CBC-TV film that co-starred Ellen Page and garnered three Gemini Awards, including best writing in a dramatic program or mini-series.

Tales for Great Grandchildren, is a collection of 13 stories drawn from the mythology and folklore of India and Nepal, which John Jackson encountered on his travels over 30 years ago. It is aimed primarily at children aged 7 to 12.

One of the founding principles of JJ Books is to bring the magical experience of reading a traditional illustrated hardback into the 21st century.

Released on 28th February, the app will be free to download (which includes one Tale), with each subsequent Tale available for £0.69.

Today's Blue Peter programme announced its search to find the best children's book of the last decade, with the launch of an online vote in which its young viewers will be able to choose from a shortlist of 10 iconic titles.

From a young James Bond to a reluctant teenage superspy, an infamous boy wizard and an underage First World War soldier, miniature action heroes abound in the list which features the bestselling children's fiction books published in the last 10 years, with only one book per author included.

The 10 books competing for the accolade (in title order) are:

· Alex Rider Mission 3: Skeleton Key by Anthony Horowitz (Walker Books, 2002)

· Candyfloss by Jacqueline Wilson, illustrated by Nick Sharratt (Random House Children's Books, 2006)

· Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney (Puffin, 2008)

· Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J K Rowling (Bloomsbury, 2003)

· Horrid Henry and the Football Fiend by Francesca Simon, illustrated by Tony Ross (Orion Children's Books, 2006)

· Mr Stink by David Walliams, illustrated by Quentin Blake (HarperCollins Children's Books, 2009)

· Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo (HarperCollins Children's Books, 2003)

· The Series of Unfortunate Events: Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket (Egmont Books, 2002)

· Theodore Boone by John Grisham (Hodder & Stoughton, 2010)

· Young Bond: SilverFin ─ A James Bond Adventure by Charlie Higson (Puffin, 2005)

Five of the books included have inspired feature films (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Harry Potter, Horrid Henry, The Series of Unfortunate Events and due this year Private Peaceful); seven are part of a series (Alex Rider, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Harry Potter, Horrid Henry, The Series of Unfortunate Events, Theodore Boone and Young Bond); and two deal with social issues such as homelessness, debt and divorce with sensitivity and humour (Candyfloss and Mr Stink).

The list also boasts several high-profile authors with three former Children's Laureates (Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Morpurgo and Quentin Blake who illustrates Mr Stink), bestselling adult US crime author John Grisham, comedian David Walliams, and Britain's richest author J K Rowling all up for the Award.

The shortlist for the vote is made up of the 10 bestselling (by volume) fiction books of the last 10 years for 5─11 year olds with a first publication date between January 2002 and December 2011. Only the top-selling book per individual, named author is included. (Source: Nielsen BookScan TCM Top 5000 Children's Fiction (Y2) from 200101 to 201152 filtered by CMBC Interest Level 5─11 years.)

The shortlist will be featured on Blue Peter's website bbc.co.uk/bluepeter for three weeks, during which time children under the age of 16 can log on with their BBC iD and vote for their favourite. The vote will close at 4pm on Thursday 23 February.

The winning book will be announced on Blue Peter on 1 March (5.45pm, CBBC), alongside the winner of the annual Blue Peter Book of the Year Award on a special show dedicated to books to tie-in with World Book Day. Blue Peter will invite the winning author to collect a 'Best Children's Book of the Last 10 Years' trophy on the show.

Imogen Russell Williams, writing in The Guardian, is

...deeply torn by the news that Jacqueline Wilson has written an updated "echo" of Edith Nesbit's Five Children and It, to be published by Puffin Books in August. I admire Wilson's writing, and can imagine a writer who adores Nesbit as Wilson does - she wrote the Introduction to Puffin's 2010 reissue of The Railway Children, and has called Nesbit her "all-time favourite classic children's author" - relishing such a privileged engagement with a dearly-loved and venerated influence, not to mention the chance to bring shedloads of her own devoted readers along to the party.

On the other hand, there's the fact that Five Children and It is not a neglected old tome in need of a dusting-off - it's never been out of print since it was published in 1902. For most people who now remember reading it as children, it's not only unimprovable, but a sacred text.

I'm... very proud that at just 22 I've become a published author, having written my own series of children's books about a young footballer called TJ (my nickname at school).

from one of many reports on Amazon's latest sales figures:

In the UK, Amazon said sales of Kindle e-books in the last three months had increased five-fold in comparison to the same period in 2010 and it received twice as many orders for Kindle e-readers in the run-up to Christmas than last year. While the Kindle was the best-selling product for the last quarter in 2011 for the UK, no e-books were in the top 10 bestselling products list--a departure from previous years where anywhere up to four have featured. The top 10 bestselling items list for the last quarter was dominated instead by DVDs, video games and music.

Our FAQ was recently updated. Be sure you have checked it out, particularly if you are an author considering digital publication.

All the recent publicity and discussion about ebooks (referenced in several blog links) has only served to strengthen my belief that a publisher dynamic will be an essential feature of digital publishing long-term.

The benefit of being an ACHUKAbooks-published author will increase with every new title released. And once we move beyond this pioneer period, digital readers will be looking for the same kind of quality assurance that they have come to expect from print publishers.

Our aim is still to have some half a dozen standard-bearing titles on our list by Easter.

Can I remind people that I am not just seeking submissions of children's and young adult books. I am genuinely interested in publishing for adults as well, both fiction and non-fiction, as the FAQ make clear.

For a review copy of The Field, or to send a submission, email kindleATachuka.co.uk

Jacqueline Wilson and Nick Sharratt talk about their working friendship in a feature from The Independent...