Latest from The Bookseller including Wellcome Book Prize shortlist

Northern Irish government cuts Bookstart funding Booktrust says it is “very disappointed” that the Northern Ireland government has cut its Bookstart funding. The charity said 50,000 children “face disappointment” this year because of the cuts. Last year, it distributed 50,000 packs, containing two books for babies and pre-school children, in the country, funded by a £250,000 grant from Northern Ireland’s Department of Education.

Canongate creates Letters Live company Canongate has created a spin-off company to further develop its Letters Live series of events. Five shows, which will feature actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Louise Brealey, will run at the Freemasons’ Hall from 31st March to 4th April 2015. The live events will celebrate the “enduring power of literary correspondence”, and will support the literacy charities The Reading Agency, First Story, and Ministry of Stories.

Authors demand festival appearance fees Authors should be paid for festival appearances, writers have told The Bookseller, because “authors are professional and deserve professional treatment”.

Trajectory and Tencent Literature in e-books partnership In a two-way partnership announced today (Monday 9th March), Shanghai-based Tencent Literature and Boston-based Trajectory, Inc., have agreed to a major import and export programme of Chinese and English-language e-books.

Coutts, Toews, Marsh on Wellcome Book Prize shortlist Two novels and four non-fiction books will compete for the Wellcome Book Prize 2015, with the shortlist split equally between independent and major publishers. The list for the £30,000 prize, which celebrates the best books engaging with medicine, health or illness, was announced today by author and chair of the 2015 judges Bill Bryson.

Manga fears over Trans-Pacific Partnership Blatant derivatives of best-selling manga, hitherto tolerated by publishers in Japan, face extinction because of TPP rules, say fans and creators. Manga readers have taken to Twitter to express their alarm over leaks of the secretive, multinational trade agreement The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that threatens to extend restrictive intellectual property (IP) laws in the region.

S&S buys 'Poems that Make Grown Women Cry' Simon & Schuster has acquired a new poetry anthology based on poems which make women cry, to be edited by father and son team Anthony and Ben Holden. The Holdens’ first collaboration, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry, published by Simon & Schuster in April last year, became the highest-selling poetry book of 2015, netting nearly 15,000 hardcover copies.   The new book will stand as a companion volume with 100 eminent women from all walks of life invited to introduce and choose the poems that moved them to tears.

PRH strong on Pushkin House shortlist Two books from Penguin Random House have made the shortlist for the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize. The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA and the Battle over a Forbidden Book by Peter Finn and Petra Couvée (Harvill Secker) has made the shortlist, alongside Stalin Volume I: Paradoxes of power, 1878-1928 by Stephen Kotkin (Penguin Press).

Libel Reform Campaign targets Northern Ireland Science writer Simon Singh is among those who have backed the Libel Reform Campaign for reform of libel laws in Northern Ireland. In a survey conducted to support the work of the Northern Ireland Law Commission, the campaign found “overwhelming support for the full adoption of the Defamation Act 2013 to reform Northern Ireland’s antiquated law of libel, which fails to protect writers, academics and scientists who speak out and criticise the rich and powerful”.

Hodderscape relaunch and open submissions Hodder & Stoughton is relaunching the website for its science fiction, fantasy and horror community Hodderscape today (9th March), and hold its first open submission period later this year.

CUP to reissue venerable grammar guide Cambridge University Press (CUP) is issuing the fourth edition of the multimillion-selling Essential Grammar in Use by Raymond Murphy to mark the book’s 25th anniversary (April, £20). First published in 1990, the book is the elementary companion to Murphy’s intermediate guide, English Grammar in Use, which was first published in 1985. Since Nielsen BookScan records began in 1998, the two titles have been worth £9.4m to UK booksellers across various editions. CUP’s records, via Cognos software, record sales of more than 30 million copies worldwide.

Bloomsbury publishes Rowling bibliography Bloomsbury Academic has published a bibliography of J K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, by Sotheby’s director for children’s books Philip Errington.