Trends
- A recap of the Publishing Innovation Forum conference. It was the first year for the book industry event, hosted in Nashville. If it continues, it may serve as a community learning and gathering place in the absence of BookExpo and Digital Book World. Read Guy LeCharles Gonzalez.
- Romance enters its Comic-Con phase. The Washington Post takes a look at the growing number of romance author and book events. Read Sophia Nguyen. Reminder: We covered this trend earlier this year, partly through a look at the startup Beventi.
- A bestselling YA novelist talks about being “extremely online.” Some things don’t change regardless of age, including this: Authors can feel quite conflicted when they’re identified as avid marketers and promoters of their own work. Twentysomething novelist Chloe Gong is often identified as a BookTok star and emphasizes that “all my platforms are more so places to interact with me, rather than me using them.” Read Lauren Puckett-Pope at Elle.
- Agents say religious publishers express less interest now in books by BIPOC authors. “There was a fervor in 2020 [from publishers] to put out as much as we can, do everything we can, find the voices, take the risks. It doesn’t feel like that attitude is there anymore. It’s still positive, it’s just a little less passionate,” says one agent. Read Ann Byle at Publishers Weekly.
AI
- A visual artist appeals the US Copyright Office’s decision on his AI-generated image. The author argues that he spent more than 100 hours writing 600 prompts to come up with just the right image. Many more appeals like this will inevitably be filed, for good reason. At what point does using an AI tool approach or match the artistic equivalent of using a camera? Read Ashley Belanger at Ars Technica.
- A federal judge criticizes the lawyers representing authors in one of the first AI lawsuits filed. “It’s very clear to me from the papers, from the docket, and from talking to the magistrate judge that you have brought this case and you have not done your job to advance it,” the judge said. “You and your team have barely been litigating the case. That’s obvious. … This is not your typical proposed class action. This is an important case. It’s an important societal issue. It’s important for your clients.” So far, the Authors Guild case against OpenAI, representing fiction authors, hasn’t received such a tongue lashing from a judge. Read Josh Gerstein at Politico.
Marketing
- The best and worst times to reach out to competing authors: Want a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship? Lay the groundwork early. Read Josh Bernoff.
- In defense of publicity essays: Author Lilly Dancyger advocates for building buzz around your book by writing and publishing spinoff essays. Read at Pine State Publicity.
Culture & Politics
- A reader really dislikes the appearance of COVID in novels: “My distaste for the inclusion of COVID-19 in so many novels is due to its lack of centrality to the stories it shows up in. … COVID-19 appears as an afterthought to the actual plot of the novels, almost as a bridge between the unmarked time of the stories and our present-day timeline.” Read Logan Brown in the Michigan Daily.
- How the arts get paid for in the US (including the literary arts). In the absence of robust government support for the arts, everyone is focused on audience engagement and community building. Read Kate Dwyer in Esquire.
- A New Zealand company, Narrative Muse, received $500,000 to boost book sales. Did it? Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to have done much at all. Read Claire Mabey at The Spinoff.
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.