Blog posts
-
Exciting things are happening as Kirkcudbright Book Week becomes Kirkcudbright Book Festival with a new website, a new programme and a new Facebook page. The 2026 event in the town in Dumfries and Galloway will run from March 5-8 and details will be announced on January 1. The old Book Week website will no longer…
-
The excellent Scottish Book Trust (SBT) is seeking donations for its ongoing campaign to provide books for disadvantaged families who do not own them. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, more than a million people in Scotland are living in poverty and a quarter of them are children. The most disadvantaged children are 50% more…
-
Sometimes it’s the smallest things that sustain an author and I have just read the latest review on Amazon of my ebook boxset of Jack Harris crime novels (nine novels for 99p, published by The Book Folks, a Joffe Books company). The review (thank you, Angela) included the line ‘I can imagine meeting Jack ‘Hawk’…
-
A reminder that a number of competitions are open for entries from writers living in the North of England. Open now until 5 February 2026 are: The flagship Northern Writers’ Awards, for emerging and established writers of fiction, narrative non-fiction, and poetry. The Northern Debut Awards, for debut writers of fiction, narrative non-fiction, young adult fiction, and…
-
Rapidly-expanding UK publisher Joffe Books is closing in on the completion of a deal to acquire Canongate’s Severn House, which is known particularly as a crime fiction specialist operating in the United States. The deal, which the two parties hope will be completed in the New Year, is the latest in the expansion of award-winning…
-
The importance of books to the Scottish economy was underlined when a major tourism award was awarded to the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The 2025 Scottish Thistle Awards National Final, whose winners are pictured here, shone a spotlight on Scotland’s tourism offering with events and festivals well represented throughout the evening. After winning the Regional…
-
Analysis by Google has added to the growing perception that 2025 has been a very good year for crime fiction sales both in the UK and globally. A number of pieces of market research released through the year have already supported the contention that the genre is performing much better than a number of others.…
-
Caption: Best-selling crime novelist Richard Osman sighing books at Capital Crime and Chris Brookmyre appearing at Bloody Scotland Dates have been announced for the return of two popular annual crime writing festivals in 2026. Capital Crime will stage its next three-day festival between Thursday 18 June-Saturday 20 June 2026, when more than 100 authors and…
-
The third novel by crime writer David L Haigh, who lives in Dumfries and Galloway, has been published and you can read my thoughts on it in the Reviews section.
-
NielsenIQ BookData and GfK Entertainment have released their international data for book sales in the first eight months of 2025, and it reveals a mixed picture. Eleven out of 19 territories reported revenue growth, often accompanied by significant price increases, with crime fiction performing particularly well. The authors of the report say that international book…
