As more A.I.-generated writing is put out in the world, more readers will question whether the text they are poring over was penned by a human. We’re barreling toward a rapid erosion of trust between authors and readers, and the publishing industry is unprepared to deal with the consequences. - The New York Times
Everyone is trying to figure out who is LLM and who is human, and sometimes we’re getting it wrong. In particular, people who learned English as a second or third language, working hard to master the strange, unpredictable rules, are accused of using AI precisely because they follow those rules. - New York Magazine
The independently-owned title has seen sales decline from a post-pandemic high of 91,000 copies in 2021 to about 78,000 currently. But the LRB has increased income by an average of 6.8% year-on-year since the pandemic and is focusing on revenue per copy rather than discounting to increase circulation. - Press Gazette (UK)
Shipping costs are rising; freighters are being re-routed, interfering with schedules; one shipment was on a vessel struck by a missile. Perhaps worst: insurance policies usually exclude acts of war. - Publishers Weekly
“The newly established award, launched to honour the legacy of the late Booker Prize-winning novelist, aims to support unpublished and un-agented writers across the UK and Ireland.” The inaugural winner is Florida-born, London-based writer and teacher Anna Dempsey for her yet-unpublished novel This Is About an Alligator and Nothing Else. - The Guardian
What I learned is that modern LLMs are built in a way that is antagonistic to great writing; they are engineered to be rule-following teacher’s pets that always have the right answer in hand. - The Atlantic
If they are to survive America’s post-literate era and serve society in the future, colleges need to invest in programs that answer the question, “Why read?” They must also design courses where the techniques of close reading are taught. - The Hill
“The lawsuit (by the American dictionary publisher and British encyclopedia) incorporates both the ‘mass-scale copying’ of their copyrighted content for training AI models and for real-time RAG scraping (retrieval-augmented generation). It also claims ChatGPT generates outputs that contain ‘full or partial verbatim reproductions’ of Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster content.” - Press Gazette (UK)
Recently Barnes & Noble has tried to convince more publishers to publish paperback originals, particularly for YA and middle grade books. But choosing a format to please one vendor, no matter the size of that vendor, is limiting, especially when smaller indie bookstores run on such tight margins in the first place. - LitHub
A chatbot is not (or not yet) an individual, and therefore bears no moral responsibility, but to lay hold of what it delivers, and to pass it off as one’s own work, could be construed as handling stolen goods. - The New Yorker
"Quinn finds the guys (mostly guys) in television shows whose characters people fantasize about. It pays those guys to read original scripts that have explicit sex in them—often, as with Ember & Ice, stories that vaguely echo the original source material that the actor became famous for.” - Slate
"The Rutherford County Library Board voted ... to relocate more than 190 books, many involving LGBTQ+ themes, from children’s and teen sections to adult areas following a review of ‘age-appropriate’ materials” - and the library director refused.- The Advocate
Not like it’s making any worker rich (check the numbers), but at least they didn’t have to strike this time. “HarperCollins employees have had a union for over 80 years, and are currently the only major publisher in the US with a union.” - LitHub
Is this real or a dream? “This year’s festival was stuffed like a generalist’s backpack. Events ran from 7 in the evening and wound down deliberately at 3:14 am, in honor of Pi Day. The program was anchored by German filmmaker Werner Herzog.” - LitHub
