Kobo in Conversation

Michael Tamblyn spoke with Eliana Ramage, author of To the Moon and Back. It's a novel about Steph, a young Cherokee woman who from the earliest age is obsessed with space and space travel, dreaming about one day becoming a NASA astronaut. 
How Eliana Ramage set her sights on the stars for her debut novel

Nathan spoke with George Newman, psychologist and associate professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. His new book is How Great Ideas Happen: The Hidden Steps Behind Breakthrough Success. It's a guide to generating ideas, hopefully great ideas, and learning about mental habits that often get in the way, and how creativity is a skill you can train and exercise. 
George Newman on getting good at bad ideas—so great ideas can happen | Kobo Books Blog

Joined by a live audience in Kobo's intimate event space, Michael Tamblyn spoke with novelist Leanne Toshiko Simpson, author of Never Been Better and winner of the 2025 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. Never Been Better is the story of a group of three friends who met in a psych ward, but time has passed and now two of whom are about to get married while the third tries to figure out whether to swallow her feelings or let it all out. 
Leanne Toshiko Simpson on self-care and writing a prize-winning rom-com

Hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj caught up on the latest private equity-fueled mergers & acquisitions, what we're not talking about when we're talking about the money made from books, plus a whole lot more.
This episode covers:
Rosetta Books acquired by Open Road Media
Why private equity is (still) interested in the book business, most recently in German companies Bookwire and Zebralution
Independent Publishing Group's move to add more direct-to-consumer services for their publisher clients (and why becoming a bookseller is harder than it looks)
The "dark matter"* that's not being reported when we talk about the health of the book business
Publishers and librarians duking it out over digital book pricing Sidebar on Heated Rivalry and the NYPL

And a remembrance of Porter Anderson
Beloved backlist books cited in this episode include Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis, The Rise and Fall fo the Third Reich by William L. Shirer, the works of Octavia E. Butler and William Styron.
More author interviews at kobo.com/conversation
Find past Booktalking episodes here 
 
*Nathan said "grey matter" in the episode because his was failing him at the time.

Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with Dan Rubinstein, author of Water Borne: A 1,200-Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage. In it he tells the story of his journey via stand-up paddleboard through waterways around Montreal, New York City, Toronto, and his home in Ottawa. But it's also the story of all of us, and how we benefit from spending time near bodies of water. 
Dan Rubinstein on finding community on waterfronts