Though book bans have been a familiar tactic in culture wars, today we’re witnessing an attack on libraries themselves as social institutions. There’s a reason for this escalation. - Washington Post
In the first half of 2024, print sales of middle reader books, intended for children ages 9 to 12, dropped by 5 percent from the same period the previous year, or 1.8 million fewer units sold, deepening a dip in the market for children’s books that’s held since 2022. - The New York Times
The Romance Writers of America has seen its membership, once more than 10,000, fall by 80% over the past five years, and the organization has filed for bankruptcy. The decline comes after a long series of conflicts, misunderstandings and missteps concerning diversity and discrimination. - The New York Times
The publishing industry is suffering from a damaging gender imbalance. According to a recent UK publishers’ survey, 83 per cent of marketing, 92 per cent of publicity and 78 per cent of editorial staff in Britain’s publishing industry are female. - The Critic
They were famous for round-robin letters to newspapers commenting on world affairs, for clogging up prize shortlists and, as their books declined in quality — which nearly always happens — taking up review space which could profitably have been distributed elsewhere. - The Critic
"Growing up in the province of Córdoba, in the Argentine interior, (Camila Sosa Villada) inhabited a first-person, female voice in the stories that she wrote and kept secret from her parents. … Years later, that voice would be celebrated. Sosa Villada’s work has collected international prizes and accolades." - The New York Times
Chatbots like Open AI’s ChatGPT can write poetry, summarize books and answer questions, often with human-level fluency. These systems can do math, based on what they have learned, but the results can vary and be wrong. - The New York Times
"The prestigious Hugo Awards for science fiction and fantasy writing revealed that almost 400 votes – about 10% of all votes cast (this year) – were fraudulently paid for to help one finalist win." As there's no evidence that the finalist knew of the plan, ze was not disqualified. - The Guardian
“Seven employees were dead, with more than 20 wounded, their blood on the walls that had not blown apart. And under a caved-in roof lay tens of thousands of charred books and printing machinery in smoldering heaps. … ‘The attack felt methodical and deliberate, like cultural genocide.’” - NPR
"If a list so devoid of representation from small presses, working class writers, genre-fiction, and poetry is aggregated with contributions from ‘hundreds of novelists, nonfiction writers, academics, book editors, journalists, critics, publishers, poets, translators, booksellers, librarians and other literary luminaries,’ what does that say about ... American readership?” - Scroll (India)
“Part of trying to get on quietly and diplomatically in life and not clash with people is keeping up the pretence that fuckwits don’t walk among us in the world, but sometimes you just have to face up to the reality of the situation: Fuckwits do walk among us in the world.” - The Villager
Orlaine McDonald, author of No Small Thing: "I’m a painfully slow writer and can find it really hard to commit anything to the page without wanting to immediately revise and refine.”- The Guardian (UK)
Most unfortunately for young Floridians, this particular Florida man is also the state’s Commissioner of Education. “In Diaz’s defense, ‘freedom’ does appear four times , and there are a number of discussions of shooting guns.” - LitHub
Among publishers, editors, scholars, critics, and even writers themselves, the stories we tell about literature are more and more stories of the economy of prestige, of one generation’s preferences righteously overturning those of its predecessors. - Granta
"Why doesn’t Solzhenitsyn’s catalogue of horrors grow boring? You read three volumes about boots trampling on human faces and your attention never flags. One reason is that Solzhenitsyn is a master of ironic narration. … But the nature of Solzhenitsyn’s 'experiment in literary investigation' explains why this book remains riveting." - The New Criterion
