It used to be so simple. Months before publication, in retail chain head offices up and down the land, publishers and booksellers between them would decide on the range of books that constituted the Christmas bestsellers. Some negotiating, horse trading and promotional spend later, from early October through to 24th December, the books you would see front of store tended to be a permanent fixture. Whether they were selling particularly well or not.

We are pleased to reproduce this brilliant essay on typography's evolving significance in a digital landscape by UX designer and typography enthusiast Matej Latin. Read on for an abridged history of typography and its changing relationship with humanity. This article was originally published on Matej's blog A Day in the Life of a Designer. Among Matej's other ventures is Gutenberg, a web typography starter kit that brings meaning and craftsmanship to web typography. Matej is originally from Slovenia.

In our experience, there are plenty of pure play tech companies merely succeeding in negotiating investment bingo ( if you include the magic words mobile / crowd-funding / marketplace / freemium / data / platform in your ten slide deck ) and lots of seemingly analogue 20th century businesses expanding rapidly, but who may have taken five or more years to prove their particular concept by doing good, recommendable work and start making profits.

We spoke to publishing expert Jane Friedman about her vast experience with digital media strategy, her work with writers and The Hot Sheet, her new publishing newsletter for authors.

Alejandra Rodriguez Creixell was an intern at whitefox and a Publishing MA student at UCL. She is currently designing a booklet for Waterstones Gower Street and searching for a job in publishing or marketing. Here she shares some key findings from her MA research on publishers' websites and their effectiveness.

Kindle and Waterstones have consciously uncoupled. Yesterday it was announced that Britain’s largest bricks and mortar book retailer is to end its era of stocking and selling e-readers. Cue a book commentariat awash with cries that this proves we are entering the swan song of the dedicated e-reader.

We asked Emma Barnes, Founder & CEO of Bibliocloud and MD of Snowbooks, some questions on Bibliocloud, programming and entrepreneurship in publishing.

Rufus is Editor, New Writing at Curtis Brown Creative. A former travel, food and lifestyle journalist, Rufus’s work has been published in The Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The Financial Times, Condé Nast Traveller and The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, among others.