Publishing: we can’t see the right track for all the digital platforms

Robert McCrum: More young people are reading books now than they were 10 years ago. And despite all the talk about electronic devices, content remains king

A Bigger Prize review – the price we pay for competition

Margaret Heffernan's brave study shows how the competitive instinct can be bad for us in all walks of life, from sport to finance, writes Iain Morris

FT Group profits rise 17%

Publisher of Financial Times operating profits grow to £55m in 2013 as owner Pearson announces overall slump of 21%. By John Reynolds

The Upside of Down by Charles Kenny – review

This upbeat view of the world economy is welcome in spite of some clear omissions, writes Ian Birrell

What to do when Nirvana are playing your venue, but Kurt Cobain’s dead?

Kurt Cobain died weeks before his band were due to play at Brixton Academy. In this extract from his new book, venue owner Simon Parkes recalls the chaos that followed

WH Smith sales fall as boss warns high street spending constrained

Sales at shops open more than a year fell 4% in the 20 weeks to 18 January, while sales of books said to be down 7-8%

Do you revel in depressing literature?

Open thread: Brace yourselves – downbeat fiction thrives after times of austerity, new research suggests. Tell us your thoughts on gloomy lit, or even write us some

Waterstones sales down ‘a smudge’

Chief executive James Daunt says bookstore chain enjoyed a much more profitable Christmas than in 2012

George Osborne places the devil at the heart of our political liturgy

Giles Fraser: First thoughts: For John Milton, the devil was a bad-boy hero standing up to God. To turn this into Osbornomics, for 'God' read 'state'

Sir Derek Hornby obituary

Former chairman of LCR, the winner of the contract to run the Eurostar rail service, and father of the novelists Nick and Gillian

LearnVest CEO: ‘Financial literacy is a fundamental human right’

LearnVest founder and CEO Alexa von Tobel talks about her new book Financially Fearless and reasons why not having a financial plan is a plan, just a really bad one

Sir Alex Ferguson autobiography on course to top Christmas books chart

Ferguson's memoir is the year's bestseller, and heads list of celebrity tales and cookbooks in Christmas countdown

Thanks to David Brent we cannot see the new poor

Jonathan Freedland: Maybe it's because white-collar jobs are often the butt of the joke, but we are forgetting too many victims of the downturn

HarperCollins UK boss tells publishers: take storytelling back from digital rivals

Charlie Redmayne warns that publishers must take their space back by going beyond ebooks to apps, games and video

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot’s prison letters to Slavoj Žižek

Pussy Riot's Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is currently in a prison hospital in Siberia; here she and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek meet in an extraordinary exchange of letters