Apocalypse BBC
The BBC has provided the world – yes, the world – with outstanding radio drama for 75 years. Yet as of the 1st of April 2011, the BBC’s World Service Radio Drama department is being completely axed –...
View ArticleLove & The Law Go Hand In Hand
Former President Jimmy Carter is sued by a pro-Israel group for writing a book they don’t like, with serious implications for all writers… how e-book royalty rates are screwing authors… an...
View ArticleThe Right of Publicity
The Right of Publicity is your right to control the commercial use of your name, image, likeness or identity. Fair enough, you may think – everyone ought to be able to control whether your image is...
View ArticleA Town Called Sue
That’s what m’learned friends call London – A Town Called Sue – because it’s the libel capital of the world, where the courts have become casinos for the international rich and powerful to become… even...
View ArticleThe Truth About “The Jewel Of Medina”
“The Jewel Of Medina” has the reputation of being one of the most controversial books of recent years… on par with “The Satanic Verses” and the Danish cartoons of Mohammed for its ability to cause...
View ArticleConflict Of Interest
Agents who cut publishers out of deals. Publishers who cut agents out of deals. Amazon cutting up everyone. Suddenly, the formerly sedate world of gentlemanly publishing is getting nasty! Presented...
View ArticleDon’t Like The Book? Sue The Author!
Should authors sign non-complete clauses? Can you include song lyrics in your manuscript? And readers suing authors for books they don’t happen to like… it seems to be a growing, and disturbing,...
View ArticleTall Stories From An Ugly War
An author who will be familiar to listeners of Radio Litopia’s Between The Lines show has got himself into trouble. We interviewed Nicolai Lilin a year ago, and found his first book, Siberian...
View ArticleJulian Assange, The Unauthorised Biography
He’s the quintessential international man of mystery: Julian Assange has surprised the world again by (a) suddenly and secretly publishing his autobiography, and (b) immediately denouncing it and his...
View ArticleInterns Are Slaves: Chinese Walls Are Nonsense
More great news you need and enlightening analysis from the confluence of writing and the law. Presented by leading lawyer Donna Ballman with literary agent Peter Cox. Don’t forget – you can post...
View ArticleBarney The Copyright Monster
A new and frightening way of limiting our free speech… How Barney got into a copyright mess… Why you should never sing Happy Birthday… and the inside poop on jury nullification. All this and more on...
View ArticleDrawing Offence
More news, ruminations and legal shenanigans for writers – presented by leading lawyer Donna Ballman with literary agent Peter Cox. Don’t forget – you can post topics for Donna to discuss in Donna’s...
View ArticleHere Comes Your Monster Lawsuit!
The Google Book Settlement has been abandoned – but like some monstrous zombie rising from the dead, the litigation continues. Attorneys for the Authors Guild have filed a motion for class...
View ArticleActing Up Over ACTA, Dicing With DRM
This week we talk about why some works you thought were public domain might be back in copyright; why Wikipedia went dark; how a copyright law that did pass may affect you; school-book censorship;...
View ArticlePapyrus to Pixels
We love to talk about story here on Litopia After Dark – and in particular, the impact that new media is having on its development, production and consumption. Are we entering a Promised Land full of...
View ArticleBringing Up Baby
Launching a virtual world, ahem, ‘experience’, it’s easy street. Just ask Pottermore’s Charlie Redmayne who revealed exclusively on The Naked Book that his site had shifted £1m worth of Harry Potter...
View ArticleShiny, Happy, Publishing People
As the great circus of publishing delights that is the annual London Book Fair disappears from view for another year, this week’s The Naked Book finally found out what it was all about. Just Be...
View ArticleThe Porn Supremacy
In the week that Microsoft bought a fifth of Barnes & Noble’s digital businesses, and we learned that e-books sales grew 360% in the UK last year, we thought at The Naked Book we’d ignore all that...
View ArticleSomething Innovative This Way Comes
It was start-up night on The Naked Book with three of the hottest new innovators explaining how their bookish brews will charm the money, entice the publisher, and beguile the reader. Oh, and make a...
View ArticleHang On A Minute That’s My Work You Are Talking About
It was the clash of the old and new on The Naked Book, with Richard Mollet, chief executive of the Publishers Association, having a proper playground scrap with two “new media” folk over copyright....
View ArticleIn The Land Of The E, The Glassy-Eyed Are King
Imagine if you will the final moments of Bugsy Malone, as reinvented for radio. That was this week’s Naked Book with authors Ewan Morrison and Barry Eisler slinging pies across Skype, as they sought to...
View ArticleThere’s A Hole In My Sock Puppet
Sock puppets of the world look on. This week The Naked Book interviewed puppet hunter extraordinaire the thriller writer Jeremy Duns. Duns exposed crime-writer R J Ellory last week, and he has been...
View ArticleTête à tête with Faber’s Stephen Page
Having scaled the walls of Faber’s well-manicured garden eleven years ago, Faber chief executive Stephen Page found himself in the broadcast hot-seat, sandwiched between Naked Bookers Philip Jones and...
View ArticleChild’s Play
In the flurry of e-book and print books sales stats, we know for certain that the children’s market does not conform to the wider market’s results. Still a predominantly print-based market it is the...
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