Bookselling & publishing

When I taught a publishing module I would scan the Bookseller every week, but nowadays I don't make an effort to see the printed version. The Bookseller is the UK bookselling and publishing industry's trade magazine. However, following up a story about today's announcement of the major Australian book chain Angus & Robertson going into administration (following on the collapse of the US' Borders book chain), I also came across this brief report on a survey that found that over-50s were slightly more likely to have e-book readers than younger people. There are also the weekly top book selling lists and the lists of (British) publications for the week.
My attempt to link this to information literacy is: it's a good site if you want to set a task about finding out more about the publishing industry, current trends and the impact of economic and political trends. Scanning the headlines for the past few months shows it is becoming increasingly difficult for people who develop literacy or information literacy skills by interacting with books to come across them for free, whether browsing in bookshops or in libraries.
Other useful sites are the (UK) Publishers Association, the American Booksellers Association, and (US) Publishers Weekly. The latter has reports on the Tools of Change (digital publishing) conference that took place this week.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Railway bridge, Glasgow, Feb 2011