Dear members — today’s story is a cracker. Earlier this year, we started examining how serious the publishing industry is about its plans to open new operations in the North. The result is a highly revealing long read by Sophie Atkinson, in which she speaks to editors, authors and other industry figures about what is really going on here — and what is at stake.

We asked Hachette how many of the northern offices they announced last year are now up and running, and we find out what kind of book advances HarperNorth, the new Manchester-based imprint of HarperCollins, is paying to its northern authors…

That’s after our mini-briefing and a little Covid-19 update.