World of Books, a major U.K.–based e-tailer of new and used books, is planning an aggressive expansion of its U.S. business in 2025.
The company, which recently purchased U.S.–based websites SecondSale.com and SellBackYourBooks.com and runs sales on Amazon Marketplace under the name GlentheBookseller, has consolidated its operations stateside and relaunched new book sales on WorldofBooks.com. It currently generates more than $200 million in annual sales, with the majority of revenue coming from the U.K., but hopes to grow the U.S. into its lead territory within the next three years.
Police in Kashmir have raided dozens of bookstores and seized more than 650 books as part of crackdowns on dissent in the Indian-administered region.
Most of the titles were written by Abul A'la Maududi, a prominent 20th-century Islamic scholar who founded Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamic organisation banned in Kashmir.
A group of independent publishers has formally incorporated as the Publishers Cooperative, a new organization aimed at leveraging collective buying power and sharing resources. The cooperative, which received its articles of incorporation this year, is currently seeking seven additional mid-sized publishers to join its founding members who are AdventureKEEN, Mountaineers Books, Gibbs-Smith, Schiffer Publishing, Mixed Media Resources, Ulysses Press, Mango Publishing, and C&T Publishing.
Faber, the storied U.K. independent publisher, has launched a new division, Faber US, in the United States. The move comes a decade after Faber first nodded to plans to enter the American market and months after fellow British publishing fixture Bloomsbury rolled out a new U.S.-based sales team.
Mahmoud Muna and Ahmad Muna, the co-owners of the Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem who were arrested by Israeli police during a raid of the bookstore on February 9, were released on Tuesday. They are under house arrest for five days, and have been ordered not to set foot in their bookstore for 20 days.
Thirty-eight international organizations representing creative industries—including the Association of American Publishers, under the auspices of the International Publishers Association—have released a joint statement calling for oversight and regulation of artificial intelligence development, focusing on respect for copyright and related intellectual property.
The statement, called the International Charter on Culture and Innovation, was released as part of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit taking place in Paris today and tomorrow.
Israeli police have raided a leading Palestinian-owned bookshop in Jerusalem and detained two of its owners, citing a children's colouring book as evidence of incitement to terrorism.
A group of major publishers in the US are suing the state of Idaho over a book-banning law.
HB 710, enacted last July, forbids anyone under the age of 18 from accessing books deemed "harmful to minors", including those depicting "sexual conduct", in school or public libraries.
The Giller prize, a prestigious Canadian literary award, has cut ties with a controversial sponsor after more than a year of pushback from the literary community.
The Authors Guild has launched a certification system, "Human Authored," intended to provide authors and publishers with a way to distinguish their work in an "increasingly AI-saturated market." The system will provide an official mark on books registered by its author or publisher through a public database, indicating whether the text of a book was written by a human.