We spoke to Jodie Archer and Matthew Jockers, authors of the upcoming The Bestseller Code (out 20th September). Jodie bought and edited books for Penguin UK before decamping for the doctoral program in English at Stanford University. After her PhD, she worked at Apple as their research lead on literature. Matthew is Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he teaches and directs the Nebraska Literary Lab. His text mining research has been profiled in The New York Times, The LA Review of Books, The Sunday Times, and more. We talked to them about how they became research partners, their research process and their favourite books.

We spoke to Nick Barley, director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, visiting lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University and President of the Word Alliance – an international network of the world’s leading literary festivals. He shed some light on how one goes about planning a literary festival of this scale, the importance of highlighting translation and the effect digital natives have on the festival.

We spoke to Kate Wilson, MD at award-winning children's book publisher Nosy Crow, about running a start-up, her prediction for children's storytelling and what you must know to be a good children's publisher.

Dan Holloway writes for the Guardian Books Blog, is the co-author of the Alliance of Independent Authors’ book Opening Up to Indie Authors, is a poet and self-published author. We asked him to tell us about his 6 years experience in self-publishing.