Dr Bronwen Thomas posts on The Conversation UK website

By Dean Eastmond

Bournemouth University’s Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and Literature, Dr Bronwen Thomas, has recently had her article featured on news website The Conversation.

Dr Thomas expressed her views giving the facts and figures about e-reader charts. The Bookseller has, for the first time, created and published a sales chart for eBooks costing over £2, revealing the top fifty books for June this year.

The report, authored by Dr Thomas, continued by explaining how erotic books (following after the “fifty shades hype”) topped the charts with “Entwined with you” coming out number one “by miles”.

“The release of the digital ranking is significant because it allows us to compare print and e-book sales directly for the first time,” Dr Bronwen Thomas explained. “It also confirms that e-books are here to stay and are likely to have a huge impact on publishing, writing and reading.”

However Dr Thomas explained how it may not show what the nation reads the most, with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece “The Great Gatsby” not being seen in the charts.

“This is probably because the Bookseller chart only looks at sales of £2 and over, and Gatsby can be yours in digital form for as little as 77p.”

The article then carries on and Bronwen continues; “E-readers do undoubtedly afford more privacy, because no one can see that you are reading 50 shades of Grey on your commute”

The report is finished, explaining the importance of this chart for future reader trends.

“Publishing houses and marketing teams can obviously still influence these charts, so it will be interesting to see how this changes as self- published titles and books published cheaply via amazon become more popular”

The Conversation is a new, non-profit, independent source of information and news from the Higher Education sector. The website is new to the UK after starting in Australia. By getting academics and experts to give their opinions, knowledge and research, the website is an extremely unique way of delivering news and information to the public.

Dean is a student at Budmouth College in Weymouth, who is working at Bournemouth University in the Press and PR Department. He joined BU on a Sir Samuel Mico Scholarship, which provides 10 students from his college with essential work experience for four weeks over the summer.