Category: Publishing Controversies
Not Everyone Who Opposes AI Is A Luddite, Sam Missingham. But Some Have Earned The Epithet
Luddites of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your brain cells. Oh, and the chance of thriving as the industry evolves.
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Adapt and Thrive: AI Translation is the Game-Changer’s Game-Changer
Imagine for one moment if, somehow, the Bertelsmann buy-out of Simon & Schuster had been successful and the ever-tuxedoed Count Dohle was still emerging from the grave each night to dictate PRH policy. There would have been no Spotify deal and no unprecedented surge in the fortunes of the audiobook industry.
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Perplexity AI expands its Publisher Programme. Lessons for Academic and Trade Book Publishing
The industry needs to take a step back from the knee-jerk “AI can never compete with human creativity” and the “AI will steal our jobs, destroy our culture and eat our children for breakfast” nonsense, and take a look at how AI can enhance human creativity and productivity.
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Beware the Future! It’s Already Here
“AI can never replace human creativity!” So why are you running about like a headless chicken because your job is at risk?
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Batten down the hatches: The implications of a Trump Presidency for the publishing industry
As Donald Trump prepares to take office once again, the publishing industry faces a unique set of challenges. With a compliant Department of Justice (DoJ) under his administration, the potential for increased scrutiny and influence over book publishing decisions is a significant concern.
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Children reading for pleasure at an all-time low. Industry in panic mode. The problem lies in the classroom, not the industry
Does anyone seriously expect a child to enjoy reading if they cannot read properly?
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No sign of Gordon Gekko at the 2024 Global 50 CEO (Simon & Schuster/KRR) Talk at Frankfurt
“Not opening the floodgates” (Richard Sarnoff, KKR) is a concession that AI content will flow regardless, and the right way forward is to learn to manage that flow, not try to dam it.
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While trade publishers are scared to get off the AI fence, Wiley seeks more lucrative deals. Trade CEOs, wake up and smell the coffee!
With more access to trade content for training, LLMs can become more efficient in the trade sectors where it currently lags behind, opening up new revenue streams and potentially new and transformative concepts yet to be explored.
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NaNoWriMo is a procrastinator’s dream. But it’s got AI right. And the new gatekeepers are worried
The new gatekeepers are not the publishers but the established authors looking to protect the status quo and keep the market as non-competitive as possible.
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Wiley to pocket $44 million this year from AI deals but rightly says no to author opt-outs
Just who do authors think is in charge here? Traditionally, publishers do not give authors control over where their books are sold or in what format, or what else the publisher might do to maximise revenues. If we authors don’t like that, we can self-publish.
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UK’s Society of Authors asks AI companies to tell them which books were used to train LLMs because the SoA hasn’t got any evidence
The SoA believes they have such a strong legal case that they have, after several months choosing the right words, written to the tech companies with a seven day ultimatum (one hundred and eleven days to write the letter, seven days to comply – hey, that’s fair!) to acknowledge receipt.
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Are romance novels literature?
In fact, some of my all time favourite “classics” are romance novels.
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