Penguin Random House and Waterstones said they have "returned to 'business as usual' following a dispute that saw the bookseller limit the visibility of PRH titles in its stores," the Bookseller reported. In response to a limit placed on its credit by the publisher, Waterstones had stopped including books from the publisher in its promotions, and its Book of the Month selections had not included any PRH titles since before the start of 2021.
In a joint statement, the companies said: "Penguin Random House U.K. is pleased to have returned to business as usual with Waterstones and both companies look forward to continuing to work together closely as partners."
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In India, the second phase of Covid-19 unlock is underway, as several states across the country have started to relax lockdown curbs. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is allowing markets and malls to resume their business under certain guidelines.
The Bookshop in Jorbagh, New Delhi, posted on Facebook: "With further instructions soon to be announced, our team is delighted to come back to work in the coming week, which is perhaps the most exciting thing to have happened in the longest time!...
"However, we are here, and if the wonderful mutual aid relations we cultivated are anything to go by, there is the solace that despite systemic failures and all manner of crap, we've got each other. There is little choice but to keep on living, so we might as well try to slowly relearn ourselves. To slowly unlearn escaping so much. That is the only way to do better by ourselves, and the loved ones who do surround us. That is the only way to perhaps do better by the loved ones who we lost.
"Our team too, will rediscover reading and loving a lot of things we quite frankly forgot through this time. But we have to, for there is little else to do. So we extend a welcome to you as well. If you'd like a chat, or books, or just rediscovering along with us the comfort of being able to pay attention to the written word again, just write to us. We'll try our very best to be your friends from afar, and maybe find you just that one book that lifts your spirit again. We know we're trying to find our own!"
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| Elly Griffiths | |
As National Crime Reading Month begins in the U.K., author Elly Griffiths (the pen name of author Domenica de Rosa) has been appointed by the Crime Writers' Association as a Booksellers Champion, a role that aims to build links between crime authors and bookshops. Griffiths will be supported in the new role by fellow crime authors Vaseem Khan and William Shaw.
"This last year has emphasized the importance of bookshops," Griffiths said. "We need books more than ever and it seems that crime novels are especially popular in difficult times. I'm delighted to be one of the CWA's Booksellers Champions, working with these wonderful people and places to ensure that readers have access to the very best of crime fiction."
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"Cream sodas, popsicles, musical organs, Mount Fuji--all these designs and more have graced the popular original book covers given free to customers buying books at Seiwado Book Store in Tsurumi Ward, Osaka, west Japan," the Mainichi reported.
The person behind the book covers is Yasuhiro Konishi, the bookshop founder's grandson. "Every day about 200 books are published. I wanted to reduce the number that get crowded out without anyone knowing they exist," he said.
Thus far, the book covers are set for distribution to about 70 bookstores in the Kansai, Tohoku and Kyushu regions, with delivery to start August 1. He also "wants to spread the custom of attaching covers to books even overseas, where it is not typically done, and further communicate the joys of bookstores and reading," the Mainichi noted. --Robert Gray