Lucy Ellis, The Kindle: My take on criticism

This blog is part of an ongoing series focused on the Kindle, drawing on the experiences and perspectives of final-year English Literature student, Lucy Ellis. These blog posts are being written as part of Lucy’s first project on the Project Management and Research undergraduate module at Cardiff University.

Part 5

There’s a lot of stuff on the internet about the book in the digital age. Type it into Google and up comes dozens of blogs, articles, interviews – but also various links to academic criticism on the subject. Hiding in the many libraries of Cardiff University is a lot of academic insight on the shift from books to ebooks, newspapers to online articles, including whether there is even a shift at all.

Lucy Ellis, The Kindle: Self publishing

This blog is part of an ongoing series focused on the Kindle, drawing on the experiences and perspectives of final-year English Literature student, Lucy Ellis. These blog posts are being written as part of Lucy’s first project on the Project Management and Research undergraduate module at Cardiff University.

Part 4

The publishing world is changing.

We’ve all heard of JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series with an estimated fortune worth £560 million. What few people know is before Rowling’s first novel was picked by Bloomsbury in 1996, she received a dozen rejections from other publishers. Considering Rowling is arguably the most successful and wealthiest children’s author in the world, it goes to show just how difficult it is for authors to get their books on the shelves. This is not an isolated story. James Joyce’s The Dubliners (1914) was rejected 22 times, Gone with the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell 38 times, Beatrix Potter was rejected so many times she decided to publish 250 copies of The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1901) herself.

Lucy Ellis,The Kindle and the world of publishing: Interview with novelist Helen Cadbury

This blog is part of an ongoing series focused on the Kindle, drawing on the experiences and perspectives of final-year English Literature student, Lucy Ellis. These blog posts are being written as part of Lucy’s first project on the Project Management and Research undergraduate module at Cardiff University.

Part 3

My last couple of blogs on the Cardiff Book History blog have focused solely on the impact of the Kindle from the perspective of the reader. However, before a novel reaches a pair of warm hands, sitting on an old armchair with a cup of tea, it goes through a brutal and lengthy process known as publishing. Therefore, in order to fully understand the impact of the Kindle, I need to explore this other crucial side. And what better way to find out than asking a real life author who’s been through the process herself?

Helen Cadbury is a York-based crime writer who released her debut novel To Catch A Rabbit in May 2013. After starting out by entering a competition with a novel she’d written at university, it has received dozens of positive reviews and is still going strong. Published by the newly launched Moth Publishing, To Catch a Rabbit is available both in print and in Kindle edition. Being a fairly new writer plunged into a very different publishing world, I was interested to hear about Helen’s personal experience and her thoughts on the Kindle’s technological and societal impact.

Lucy Ellis, The Kindle: Past, Present, Future

This blog is part of an ongoing series focused on the Kindle, drawing on the experiences and perspectives of final-year English Literature student, Lucy Ellis. These blog posts are being written as part of Lucy’s first project on the Project Management and Research undergraduate module at Cardiff University.

Part 2

Now in 2013, the Kindle has established itself well into the lives of millions of readers. It’s bizarre to think that entire libraries – the big dusty rooms characterised in scary movies – could eventually be replaced with an electronic tablet no bigger than one of the books itself. The Kindle is happening, but where did it start? What’s the story behind it?

Lucy Ellis, The Kindle: My Experience

This blog is the first of a series focused on the Kindle, drawing on the experiences and perspectives of final-year English Literature student, Lucy Ellis. These blog posts are being written as part of Lucy’s first project on the Project Management and Research undergraduate module at Cardiff University.

Part 1

This academic year, Cardiff University’s English Literature department has piloted a brand new module, in which third year students can contribute to the university’s academic projects and get a first hand taste of how research at Cardiff works. My name is Lucy, and this semester I will be blogging for Cardiff Book History on a subject of my own. Cardiff Book History provides a wide variety of information on speakers, workshops, interviews and general points of interests ranging from native cosmopolitanism to women and gardens in the eighteenth century. However, I wanted to think outside the box.

Being a blog site dedicated to the history of the book, I wished to focus on how books and the methods people use to read have transformed significantly over the last couple of decades – most obviously with the phenomenon of new technology, exemplified by the Amazon Kindle. Through this technological revolution, the popularity of reading has been revitalised; casually reading a Kindle one-handed on a busy London tube is a day to day sight. According to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s Taking Part 2011/12 Adult and Child Report, around three quarters of the UK population read in their spare time, beating gardening, cinema trips and theatre. It is the ultimate cultural hobby. This is why I’ve decided not to talk about what we read, but the way we read, and there’s no better starting point than to discuss my own personal experience with the Kindle.