Traditional Publishing
- An excellent look at why the Canadian and US publishing ecosystems differ. If it’s too long of a read: It boils down to government funding. But try to make time for this one. Read Ken Whyte at SHuSH.
- A 2019 dystopian novel becomes an Amazon bestseller after a single tweet by “Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood.” You can’t make this stuff up. Read Madison Malone Kirchner at the New York Times (gift link).
- Resignations at Coffee House: This respected small publisher recently lost two editors and a publicist, or one-third of its staff. It currently has an interim director after the departure of its publisher in August 2022. Read Claire Kirch in Publishers Weekly.
AI
- The Sudowrite controversy: Sudowrite is an AI-writing tool that recently launched the “Story Engine” for long-form writing, allowing authors to write a novel in just a few days. SFF writer Jason Sanford tries to interview Sudowrite’s founder, Amit Gupta, but Gupta cuts the interview short. Read Genre Grapevine.
- What AI can teach us about copyright: A copyright lawyer believes there’s no meaningful difference between tools like ChatGPT and other “non-consumptive” or computational uses that courts have ruled as fair use. He uses this as a jumping-off point to explain why copyright principles point to AI training as fair use. Read Brandon Butler at Free Think.
- Copyright safety for generative AI—a law review paper that looks at how ChatGPT, Midjourney, and similar tools can potentially memorize training data and infringe copyright in their outputs as a result—and how to prevent that from occurring. Read Matthew Sag at SSRN.
- An update from Clarkesworld. The SFF journal that was overwhelmed by AI-generated crap has posted more information about how it’s going. (Not great.) Read Neil Clarke.
- Pearson takes legal action over AI. The educational publisher—one of the largest in the world—has sent out cease-and-desist letters, although they’re not saying who received them. Read Daniel O’Boyle at Evening Standard.
Social Media + The Creator Economy
- Why a writer left Wattpad for Substack: He published three books with Wattpad and became a Wattpad Star. However, over time, he felt like he wasn’t really building a readership, and it was hard to monetize the activity. Enter Substack. Read Simon K. Jones.
- How BookTok has changed publishing: This is a high-level look at how self-published and traditionally published authors alike have benefitted from the platform—and how it continues to drive book sales. Read Marta Blino at Business Insider.
- How LinkedIn is driving discovery: More adults use it than Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, or Reddit. Read Monojoy Bhattacharjee at What’s New in Publishing.
- YouTube is a bigger business than Netflix. And a lot of that revenue is flowing directly toward creators. Read Davey Alba at Bloomberg (subscription required).
- Instagram/Meta plans to launch a Twitter competitor. It may arrive as soon as June. Read Matt Navarra’s Twitter thread.
Audio
- The work of the audiobook: This is a lovely piece about the most talented audiobook narrators you’re likely to find, but it then takes a rather nebulous turn when it implies they deserve royalties. (If audiobook narrators deserve royalties, what about the editors or designers or anyone else critical to the finished work?) Read Alexander Manshel, Laura B. McGrath, and J.D. Porter at LA Review of Books.
Culture & Politics
- Men confess to loving romance novels. One guy suggests that reading the books is “almost a how-to about relationships.” Read Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).
- Was it okay for Prince Harry’s ghostwriter to spill the beans?Recently, the ghostwriter for Spare, J.H. Moehringer, wrote a New Yorker piece about his work for the Prince. The head of a ghostwriting firm says that doing so was a public service. Read Dan Gerstein at Gotham Ghostwriters.
- Masha Gessen resigns from the PEN America board. Gessen resigned in protest after the organization canceled a panel with Russian-born authors who left the country in August. Read Gal Beckerman at the Atlantic(subscription may be required).
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.