Traditional Publishing
- Independent UK publisher Fitzcarraldo is only 10 years old but has published four Nobel Prize–winning writers. The publisher has a distinct brand and attracts a devoted readership for its entire catalog. Read Rebecca Mead in the New Yorker (sub may be required).
- Lessons learned by a startup nonfiction publisher in Canada. The most successful business plan, despite the owner’s resistance: focusing on Canadian-only projects. Read Kenneth Whyte at SHuSH.
Bookselling
- Take a look at upcoming new B&N locations. Nearly 60 stores will be opening this year. Read Christopher Zara at Fast Company.
- Are bookstores a waste of space? A New Yorker critic says the US has had a bookstore problem since before the nation’s founding. Read Louis Menand in the New Yorker (sub may be required).
- Australia’s online bookstore Booktopia sold to camera retailer. The new owner plans to retain existing employees and hire more to keep the store running. Read Ed Nawotka in Publishers Weekly.
Hollywood
- Is romantasy about to become big in Hollywood, too? So far TV and movie executives haven’t been “as energized” as readers over the category. Part of the problem: The industry is undergoing cost-cutting measures that make it harder to produce the fantastical worlds created by authors like Sarah J. Maas. Read Jessica Karl at Bloomberg. For a few more stats and discussion sparked by the box office success of It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover, read Millie Giles at Sherwood News.
Marketing & Promotion
- Nate Silver notes the “Substack effect” for book authors. Silver just released a new book and says his newsletter has benefitted sales: “Someone should probably write a trend story about what my partner and I have started to call the ‘Substack Effect’ for book authors. I realize I’m talking to a microfraction of the audience, but if you’re someone who’s working on a book, I’d strongly encourage you to start an email newsletter—just trust me on this one.” Read at Silver Bulletin.
Culture & Politics
- Apparently “book bars” are gaining momentum in New York City. They’re about “creating community,” of course, and pushing back against screen time. Read Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner at Eater New York.
- There’s now antibillionaire romance: “Antibillionaire romances offer a path to finding joy in the mundane and romanticizing the small, domestic moments of life, something that feels like it’s in reach for all of us, not only if you capture the attention of the 1 percent.” Read Jackie Snow at Slate.
- Social media has entered a “lean back” era. What happens when people go to social media to be entertained rather than to connect? It leads to professional and full-time content creators. Read Julia Alexander at Posting Nexus.
AI
- Advertisers must deal with consumer dislike for AI. Google had to pull an ad where a dad helped his daughter write a letter using AI. Read Lucia Moses and Lara O’Reilly at Business Insider (sub may be required).
- Text-to-multilingual speech is growing. A company just released an app, Reader, that lets users upload text content (articles, PDFs, ebooks) and listen to it in different languages. Read Ivan Mehta at TechCrunch.
- The image-generation class-action lawsuit against OpenAI moves forward. The artists can proceed with discovery, but it’s still early days for this case. Read Ashley Belanger at Ars Technica.
- Condé Nast strikes a multi-year deal with OpenAI. The media company that owns the New Yorker, Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, and Bon Appétit has now agreed to let OpenAI train on its body of work. Read Todd Spangler in Variety.
- Anthropic has been hit with a class-action lawsuit by authors. Anthropic is just the latest company to be sued; separate class-action lawsuits have been filed against OpenAI and Meta. Read Blake Brittain at Reuters.
- The potential effects of Amazon’s AI-driven search. Publisher Keith Riegert speculates what might change at Amazon as the search experience is steered more by AI. Read at his site.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.