HarperCollins has announced a multi-year partnership with Toonstar, an “AI-powered” animation studio, to adapt a slate of the publisher’s titles into original YouTube series. - Publishers Weekly
For the first 40,000 years of its existence, it was simply an abstract symbolic system to process complex data; only in the last 3,000 years did mankind acquire the strange notion that these sign-systems might correspond to the grunts and gurgles they used for everyday communication. - Unherd
Ever since a publisher’s clever marketing trick in 1923, Norwegians have associated the period around Easter with crime fiction. The phenomenon is called påskekrim (Easter crime) and it’s ubiquitous. And since Norway is usually still cold this time of year, holing up and reading makes sense. - BBC
“Are they evil or are they sick? While novelists writing in the years of the War on Drugs were asking this question about serial killers, the general public was asking the same question about drug addicts.” - Literary Hub
The Kindle ecosystem is perhaps the apotheosis of this shift. One Guardian reporter found Amazon had recorded every title, highlight and page turn on her Kindle app (40,000 entries over two years). The company’s dominance sets the terms for everyone in the marketplace. - Washington Post
As a literary critic and scholar, I believe the deeper question isn’t whether or not critics should do more to hide their use of AI – but the ethics of using it at all. - The Conversation
She was fired for her refusal to remove more than 100 books that discuss gender identity or contain violence from the children’s shelves. - The New York Times
Today, by some estimates, the average freelance journalist is paid around $0.25 to $0.50 per word, and at the highest-paying glossies, rates have hovered around $2 per word for more than a decade, even as inflation has diminished the purchasing power of that seemingly handsome fee. - The Baffler
“The Salt Lake Tribune is in a unique position among American newspapers, having converted to nonprofit status in 2019. In the years since, it’s achieved financial stability and had the space to think about some foundational questions: What should a nonprofit newspaper look like? What does it owe to a community that a for-profit might not?” - Nieman Lab
Yes, literature is structured by institutions that serve their own self-interest, but that self-interest requires a lot of other people to give them their labor at a very low cost. And that can only happen if the business does enough to maintain this glow of prestige. - Woman of Letters
For the 250th anniversary of the USA’s founding document, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 19th Amendment to the Constitution (the one which gave women the right to vote) have been put on display with the original Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights. - The New York Times
“(The paper) has decided to experiment with Substack by recreating its weekly food newsletter Feast on the platform. The Substack play is part of Project Berger, the multi-year transformation plan designed to make The Guardian ‘more visual, digital and experimental’.” … Feast has more than 100,000 subscribers and open rates of almost 70%.” - Press Gazette (UK)
The New York Times launched an investigation, during which Preston admitted that he had used AI to assist writing the review and did not spot the sections that were pulled from the Guardian before submitting it. - The Guardian
In a moment in which international relations are dominating news headlines around the globe, three of these shortlisted novels explore pivotal moments in world history: imperialist Japan-controlled Taiwan in the 1930s, Nazi-era Germany and the 1979 Revolution in Iran. - NPR
“One week after Hachette Book Group pulled Mia Ballard’s Shy Girl for strong suspicions of AI use, the industry is reeling — and struggling to contend with the implications of the novel’s cancelation.” So far, most publishers are keeping quiet, but agents have plenty to say. - Publishers Weekly
