Two interesting news snippets from Britain caught our eye this week. The first was a report in the Bookseller:

The latest figures from Nielsen BookScan reveal that in the first seven months of this year 114,000 new titles appeared, almost 540 each day, while in the past year it has identified an additional 2,400 publishers. Five years ago 94,000 new titles were published in the UK; this year the figure will be more than 200,000.

On the surface, that appears to be good news. Dig deeper, though, and it’s a case of quantity over quality. The enormous rise in new titles is largely due to print-on-demand technology giving the self-publishing industry a fillip. The Bookseller sees little cause for concern here – but we’re not so sure.

A writer of unquestionable quality, however, has suffered a blow. Ian McEwan’s Saturday, a book we enjoyed hugely, has failed to make the shortlist of six for the upcoming Man Booker prize. McEwan was widely rated as second-favourite to win the Booker.

These are the books that made it, and gratifyingly, all are currently available in New Zealand:

• The Sea by John Banville

• On Beauty by Zadie Smith

• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

• The Accidental by Ali Smith

• Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

• A Long, Long Way by Sebastian Barry

The betting odds at William Hill are Barnes at 5/4, Ishiguro 3/1, Zadie Smith 4/1, Sebastian Barry 8/1, John Banville 10/1 and Ali Smith at 12/1.