Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
Publishing is one of many fields poised for disruption by tech companies and artificial intelligence (AI). New platforms and approaches, like a book imprint by Microsoft and a self-publishing tech startup that uses AI, promise to make publishing faster and more accessible than ever.
But they also may threaten jobs - and demand a reconsideration of the status and role of books as cultural objects. And what will be the impact of TikTok owner ByteDance's move into traditional book publishing?
Last week, Microsoft announced a new book imprint, 8080 Books. It will focus on nonfiction titles relating to technology, science and business.
8080 Books plans "to test and experiment with the latest tech to accelerate and democratize book publishing", though as some sceptics have noted, it is not yet entirely clear what this will entail.
The first title, No Prize for Pessimism by Sam Schillace (Microsoft's deputy chief technology officer) arguably sets the tone for the imprint. These "letters from a messy tech optimist" urge readers to embrace the disruptive potential of new technologies (AI is name-checked in the blurb), arguing optimism is essential for innovation and creativity. You can even discuss the book with its bespoke chatbot here.
Many celebrities' books are actually written by others, the UK writers' union says, and it's time they were acknowledged
The Society of AuthorsThe British authors’ organization, with a membership of over 7,000 writers. Membership is open to those who have had a book published, or who have an offer to publish (without subsidy by the author). Offers individual specialist advice and a range of publications to its members. Has also campaigned successfully on behalf of authors in general for improved terms and established a minimum terms agreement with many publishers. Recently campaigned to get the Public Lending Right fund increased from £5 million to £7 million for the year 2002/2003. Regularly uses input from members to produce comparative surveys of publishers’ royalty payment systems. http://www.societyofauthors.org/ (SoA) is calling on celebrities and the publishing industry to properly acknowledge the writers behind celebrity books, particularly those aimed at children.
In a statement published on Monday, the SoA - the largest trade union of writers, illustrators and translators in the UK - said that many celebrity titles, especially those for children, involve ghostwriters and other "co-creators".
The union encouraged the publishing industry to "recognise and acknowledge the contributions which are made by all the creators involved, from the celebrities whose names encourage readers to pick up a book to the ghostwriters and, often, illustrators whose skills help to bring stories to life."
Writers have been coming out against companies that fund awards, with serious implications for the books industry
On a Monday evening in mid-November, dozens of demonstrators gathered outside Toronto's Park Hyatt Hotel, where the Giller prize gala was taking place. The following night, in London, the Baillie Gifford nonfiction prize dinner closed with this year's winner Richard Flanagan announcing that he would be deferring receipt of the prize money in protest. And two days later, more than a hundred authors - Isabella Hammad, Andrew O'Hagan and Maaza Mengiste among them - signed an open letter condemning the "deep-rooted hypocrisy" of the JCB prize for literature.
These awards have big purses - the Giller winner gets 100,000 Canadian dollars, the Baillie Gifford £50,000, the JCB 2.5m rupees - and can be career-makers. But the past year has seen so much pushback against the corporate sponsors behind the prizes that winning these awards is no longer a straightforwardly celebratory moment for an author.
Are we finally at the end of BookTok's chapter?
BookTok has undoubtedly made significant contributions to the publishing industry. It increased backlist sales, served as a marketing vehicle for frontlists, launched new authors, and generated revenue for both publishers and bookstores. But most importantly, the community inspired many young people to read-it bred new readers who will eventually seek out other books not recommended on the platform. Whether you like it or not, BookTok has moved the needle in an ailing industry.
As with most good things, however, it may not last forever. We've had enough of endless, disappointing BookTok recommendations that promise payoff, not to mention its other cons. So are we finally at the end of BookTok's chapter? Are we coming down from the climax? I asked some industry experts to find out if BookTok's magic has finally faded. These experts have expressed varying opinions on BookTok's current state, but the general consensus is that the rules governing BookTok are evolving.
An established YA author experiments with indie publishing
Turning to self-publishing may seem like an unusual step for a successful traditionally published author such as Melissa Marr, whose extensive oeuvre includes the fantasy series Wicked Lovely (HarperCollins) and the Blackwell Pages (Little, Brown), coauthored with Kelley Armstrong. Marr, however, says she went indie for several reasons-most notably, her desire to try something new and her aversion to being pigeonholed. "Let's be honest: I'm lousy at boxes," Marr says. "I write picture books, middle grade, YA, adult, short fiction, and manga. Why not try this?"
John Brandon on Coming to Terms with Contemporary Settings, How Technology Shapes Plots, and America's Current Malaise
The last time I wrote a novel set in what I considered to be the present was 2009-2010. The iPhone had appeared in 2007, but it had nothing to do with my characters, who were poor or old or both and lived on the scrappy outskirts of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Since then, my books have taken place in Florida, but not the Florida of today.
First, I dialed the year all the way back to 1865, indulging in a full year of research-histories and cookbooks and botanical guides and documentaries on DVD scattered all over my office and living room. Did I delve into a bygone century because I was hitting the age (my early forties) when men famously become interested in history? Perhaps.
An indie author discusses the joys of revising.
In talking with other writers, I've found that I'm a rather rare bird in that I love rewriting my work as much as I love the first heady rush of getting it down on the page.
Don't get me wrong-I love raw creation writing. On the days where writing is just me and a blank screen and a goal of 2,000 words set down on there before the dog's evening walk, it can be glorious. The words just flow unhindered from my subconscious out through my fingers, amazing my conscious mind with what the characters are choosing to do. It's not always like that: some days it's a painful slog from start to finish, and I inevitably begin to get in "the flow" just when I need to stop.
Debut authors: How they did it, what they learned, and why you can do it, too.
Pre-Young: Too Young for Cancer is the first book I've authored. I decided to write it because when I was initially diagnosed with stage IV cancer at twenty-nine, to say I was devastated would have been an understatement. I had no idea what to expect, and all I really knew about cancer at that point in my life came from books, movies, and TV shows-most of which were fear-striking and made me doubt if I was strong enough to endure what was ahead of me. I wanted to shed light on the mental battle, which is often twice as challenging as the physical fight against cancer, share how important it is to advocate for yourself, and to highlight how empathy in the face of uncertainty helped reshape my damaged relationship with the medical system.
Launching on Monday 16th December, the new coalition of rights holders, which includes publishers and authors, has outlined three key principles for copyright and generative AI policy and made a statement supported by all member organisations, which include trade bodies such as the Publishers Association (PA) and Society of Authors (SoA). The coalition is calling on the government to adopt the principles as a framework for developing AI policy.
The newly formed coalition's 30+ members include the PA and SoA, Publishers' Licensing Services, Independent Publishers Guild, Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society, Association of Authors' AgentsThe association of UK agents. Their website (http://www.agentsassoc.co.uk/index.html) gives a Directory of Members and a code of practice, but no information about the agencies other than their names. The association refers visitors to the UK agent listings from The Writers' & Artists' Yearbook on the WritersServices site., the European Publishers Council, Association of Illustrators, and Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. Other members include the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers as well as the International Association of Scientific Technical & Medical Publishers. Pan MacmillanOne of largest fiction and non-fiction book publishers in UK; includes imprints of Pan, Picador and Macmillan Children’s Books has also signed up.
The coalition's three principles for AI policy focus on a dynamic licensing market with robust protections for copyright, control and transparency for content creators, and driving growth and innovation in the creative and tech sectors.
Launching on Monday 16th December, the new coalition of rights holders, which includes publishers and authors, has outlined three key principles for copyright and generative AI policy and made a statement supported by all member organisations, which include trade bodies such as the Publishers Association (PA) and Society of Authors (SoA). The coalition is calling on the government to adopt the principles as a framework for developing AI policy. The newly formed coalition%u2019s 30 members include the PA and SoA, Publishers%u2019 Licensing Services, Independent Publishers Guild, Authors%u2019 Licensing and Collecting Society, Association of Authors%u2019 Agents, the European Publishers Council, Association of Illustrators, and Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. Other members include the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers as well as the International Association of Scientific Technical & Medical Publishers. Pan MacmillanOne of largest fiction and non-fiction book publishers in UK; includes imprints of Pan, Picador and Macmillan Children’s Books has also signed up. The coalition%u2019s three principles for AI policy focus on a dynamic licensing market with robust protections for copyright, control and transparency for content creators, and driving growth and innovation in the creative and tech sectors.
Parliamentarians and authors including Kate Mosse have raised significant concerns about the alleged theft of copyright on a mass scale by Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) firms, ahead of a debate next week.
These amendments would make the UK's existing copyright framework enforceable, empowering creative industries, media organisations and individual creators to decide whether their copyrighted work can be used to train Artificial Intelligence (AI) models. They would also enable creators to negotiate for fair terms when licensing their content. By fostering a dynamic market for creative content in GAI development, these measures would ensure that both the creative and tech sectors can flourish together.
Stakeholders such as Women's Prize for Fiction founder, Mosse, have spoken out on the issue.
Mosse said: "Everyone is interested in how we can do things more efficiently. If there is no time for creators to create, there will be nothing to be data mined.
'The problem occurs when we rely on its "thinking" to replace our thinking.'
You know the shpiel. Artificial intelligence will solve all our problems. It will compute our calculus, it will write our emails, it will give us the most efficient recipe for banana bread, etc. But humans will still be around, one hopes, and so, humans being humans, there will still be greed and jealousy and hate and therefore there will be crime. But surely AI will solve that too!
Article continues after advertisementBut why use the future tense? For over a decade now, AI has been deployed in the U.S. to prevent crime. Let me introduce you to COMPAS (Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions), a proprietary bit of software licensed by Equivant (a subsidiary of billion-dollar conglomerate Constellation Software). COMPAS, you'll be delighted to learn, is used by courts across the country to measure recidivism risk in determining pre-trial and parole release. Miraculous! True, upon investigation, COMPAS does tend to demonstrate a pronounced racial bias, insomuch that "blacks are almost twice as likely as whites to be labeled a higher risk but not actually re-offend", but a further study demonstrated that this bias is not limited to race but also gender, so...yay?
The Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) launched a major report in parliament on Tuesday (3rd December) of over 13,500 authors' views on artificial intelligence (AI) showing almost all want remuneration if their work is used for training models while over three-quarters (77%) do not currently know if their writing has already been used in this way.
The 40-page report, "A Brave New World? A survey of writers on AI, remuneration, transparency and choice", follows a survey of ALCS' 13,574 members over the summer about AI and two potential licensing options that would enable ALCS to compensate writers when their works were used.
The report suggests that authors are not completely opposed to their works being used to train AI models-but only if they received fair compensation, were appropriately credited or their permission was asked.
When it comes to new technology, publishing never prioritises author income.
Recently, news broke of a new publisher that seeks to disrupt publishing by using AI to publish 8,000 books alone in 2025. The article swept publishing. Editors, agents, publicists, marketers and salespeople, all up in arms about how this would bring about the end of the industry, how it is awful and capitalistic and absolutely disgusting of this company to make money off people's creations without paying them. What about the authors, we demanded to know, whose works have been fed into large language models to spit out these books? When do they get their cut-even if they want to be involved, which is unlikely for most?
I have to confess to feeling frustrated when I saw publishing employees in the UK rage against this startup on social media. Though I know they were coming at this with good intentions, I found myself wondering: well, how much do you truly mean this? How far are you willing to go to fight for authors' rights and revenues?
"I feel that the world of espionage is actually the human condition writ large. We've all betrayed people. We've all lied to people."
Gabriel Dax, the main character of William Boyd's terrific new novel, is a talented journalist and the author of several acclaimed travel books-"a clever bugger," as an admirer puts it, but heretofore not a figure of intrigue. In "Gabriel's Moon," he becomes one. The action starts in the early 1960s, when Gabriel, a Brit who suspects his brother has ties to the country's intelligence services, is recruited to travel to Spain, pick up an artwork and deliver it to a person he's never met. It's the height of the Cold War, and our man in London has become an international spy.
At the end of a book tour, rosy thoughts don't come naturally. You're alternating between an audience of ten or one hundred, a sense of giddiness and futility. You've searched for your novel in airport bookstores, handled reader questions about your use of the wrong car model, introduced yourself to people you've met before. You'd ideally be placed in suspended animation for the first six months to avoid wondering about sales, or to prevent futilely searching for your name on one list or another, trying to reinflate your ego for another event. You love your books but you're sick of talking about yourself.
And you answer awkward questions about how and why you began writing. I've gotten more of these questions than usual because I am actually publicizing five books-my earlier Jules Clement mystery novels have been reissued in tandem with The River View, and a twenty-year gap in the series brings up questions. In the interim, I published just two other, unrelated novels, The Widow Nash and The Center of Everything. What have I been doing; why did I stop and begin again?
And so every Q & A becomes an encounter session, a low-key confessional about my creative existence. What upbeat spin could I put on a career that hasn't been typical? And what is typical, anyway?
Lou Berney is the Edgar Award-winning author of five crime novels, all from William Morrow/HarperCollins, the latest of which, Double Barrel Bluff, will be published in November 2024. His short fiction has appeared in publications from The New Yorker to the Pushcart Prize anthology. He teaches at Oklahoma City University.
I wanted to be a writer since I was four or five years old-thanks to my two older sisters who liked to play school with me (whether I liked it or not). Not only did they teach me how to read, write, and love books, they encouraged me to invent my own stories and characters. I was hooked early and never looked back.
My first novel, Gutshot Straight, came out of the WGA strike in 2007. I was working as a screenwriter at the time, so all my projects were put immediately on hold. I had to do something during the bleak winter, so I decided to get back to my first love-novels. I had such a wonderful time writing Gutshot Straight, disappearing into the fictional world in a way you can't do with screenplays, that I realized this was it, fiction was the medium for me.
The hugely popular author reveals his excitement at the release of his latest Stormlight saga, how he extracted himself from Amazon and why JK Rowling should have stuck to novels
It's 1pm in American Fork, Utah, and the author of one of the biggest books of the year - in physical size and sales potential - is in his bedroom, having just woken up. This, it turns out, is typical. "I usually write until about 4am, then get up around noon," Brandon Sanderson tells me over video call, leaning forward in a large chair.
The Nebraska-born author has been writing through the night ever since he was a student some 25 years ago, when he spent his graveyard shifts at a hotel drafting a succession of unpublished novels. In 2005, his debut, Elantris (about religious extremists and a cursed city) was published to acclaim. His hugely successful Mistborn series (metal-fuelled wizards battle an immortal tyrant - then deal with the consequences) began a year later. But the Stormlight Archive, a saga that sits somewhere between Final Fantasy and Ragnarok with a sprinkling of Paradise Lost, is Sanderson's defining work, accounting for more than 10 million of the 34 million copies he has sold throughout his career.
Pop the champagne and tuck into the "black gold" fit for tsars (and charlied-up City boys at the tail end of 15-hour benders), for voters have narrowly plumped for an eco-tome on caviar consumption and the increasingly endangered sturgeon as the winner of 2024's The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year.
The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire earned 27% of the public vote, just ahead of How to Dungeon Master Parenting, which itself was a hair in front of Looking through the Speculum: Examining the Women's Health Movement. With just five percentage points separating the top three, it is the closest Diagram race since the selection of the winner for the 46-year-old prize went to an online public vote 25 years ago. To forestall the inevitable legal challenges and conspiracy theorists bemoaning the outcome, I will say we have employed the most rigorous and impeccable election tabulating system available... within our budget. So, no Dominion Voting Systems, but your ol' pal Horace poring through some spreadsheets after his customary liquid lunch (I work better and more accurately after a few Courvoisiers).
