At Toronto's Harbourfront Centre, Nathan interviewed Ian Hamilton, author of the Ava Lee series, and Steve Urszenyi, author of Perfect Shot. Ian's latest book The Fury of Beijing is (possibly) the last in the series, while Steve's book kicks off the Special Agent Alexandra Martel series.

Live at MOTIVE: Thrills from Start to Finish

Michael spoke with artist, illustrator, and fashion designer, Maurice Vellekoop. Over a career spanning four decades, Vellekoop's work has been published in magazines including The New Yorker, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Fashion, and Cosmopolitan, and he’s the author and illustrator of the books, The World of Gloria Badcock: A Comic for Adults, A Nut at the Opera, and Maurice Vellekoop’s Pin-ups, to name just a few.

His newest book is I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together. It’s a memoir of his childhood and early adulthood in a suburb of Toronto, the youngest of four siblings in a strictly religious household, and it’s about coming out as a gay man at a very particular time in the 1980s.

Spending time with Maurice Vellekoop

We're sweeping up the glitter after awarding the 10th annual Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize to a trio of brilliant authors just a few days ago (more on that to come). We'll be back in your feed with more author interviews soon.

In the meantime...

When Kobo in Conversation hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj aren't reading books and interviewing authors for this show, they're working in the business of selling eBooks, audiobooks, and eReaders. In this episode, Nathan sat Michael down to get his takes on a bunch of book biz news making headlines now.* It's kind of an experiment, and we'll do it again soon—but we'll keep changing it up until we can make it feel right. Thoughts? Questions? Stuff you'd like us to cover? Email Nathan at nmaharaj@kobo.com or drop a comment below if you're listening on YouTube.

Topics covered in this episode:

• What's a publisher, and why doesn't everybody self-publish now?
• Why does it seem like publishers buying each other all the time?
• Why are major players in high finance poking around in the book business so much lately?
• Why are big league publishing executives leaving to create new publishing companies—just to publish books by famous people?
• Costco's not going to sell books anymore: does it matter?
• Post-pandemic peril in Australian bookselling
• The "Spotify for audiobooks" before Spotify decided to be the Spotify for audiobooks

Books mentioned:

• The Trial: The DOJ's Suit to Block Penguin Random House's Acquisition of Simon & Schuster by Michael Cader of Publishers Lunch
• Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar
• The works of Ernest Hemingway, published by Scribner

*Michael may have actually staged a one man studio sit-in, and Nathan rolled tape to get him to leave. Accounts differ.