The Guardian

‘You don’t have to be Bono or Bruce’: the business behind the current glut of music books

If it feels as though you can’t move for new music, then books about pop aren’t far behind. This Christmas alone has brought weighty tomes by Bono and Bob Dylan, Nick Cave’s conversations with the writer Sean O’Hagan, Bez’s autobiography, and former GQ editor Dylan Jones’s book about 1995. In recent years in the UK, two new imprints have launched – Nine Eight and White Rabbit – both running music-only lists within larger publishing groups. Omnibus is still soldiering on after 50 years, and the big non-specialist publishers have music lists, too. Music writing has its own literary festivals – Louder Than Words in Manchester, in Glasgow – and its own prizes.

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