Category: UK
Redundancies in UK Publishing: A Misleading Snapshot of 2024
Why is there so little analysis out there of what the Trump years may bring for our industry? Love him or loathe him, no-one is ever going to accuse Trump of being a booklover and a friend of the publishing industry.
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Bookouture Clocks ‘Significant Double-Digit Sales Growth’ Two Years Running
Bookouture’s commitment to growth and adapting to market trends, vindicates my early impressions of Bookouture back before the 2017 buyout by Hachette UK, as a publisher to watch.
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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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Pearson credits AI with driving sales
Pearson is at the forefront of a fundamental shift in educational publishing that in time is going to bring into question the very viability of printed books in the education sector.
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OUP terminates US jobs, but no, AI was not to blame, so no-one will be shedding tears. Business is business!
AI not to blame? Hence the deafening silence from the industry sidelines.
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UK – Penguin book-vending machines: a gimmick and a missed opportunity
Do you have any idea how many secondary schools there are in the UK? How about 4,190, per BESA. So Penguin, two down, 4,188 to go! So far you are averaging two a year, so you could have a book-vending machine in every secondary school in the country by 2064!
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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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No, the Creatives’ Rights Alliance does not speak for 500,000 people. Nicola Solomon needs to heed her own demands about consultation
And one has to wonder how it is that all these organisations have joined the Creatives’ Rights Alliance at the same time. Should we be reporting that to the competition authorities?
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Centre Pompidou’s Embrace of Comics: A New Era for the 9th Art
British girls’ comics held a special fascination for me, and while the storylines all too often reflected twentieth century British class divisions, the art in many girls comics, and especially those from the DC Thomson camp, was a joy to behold.
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Another HarperCollins summer party on the AI fence
Big daddy Robert Thomson has already made clear News Corp is going to embrace AI in all its glory, so better to take the reins than be dragged along regardless.
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UK education publishers wanting more money for cash-strapped schools is self-serving
Welcome to the slippery-slope world of synthetic phonics, brought to you by publishers.
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UK publisher and author advocates want AI regulation and fair pay, but we should be careful what we wish for
Fair pay for writers? I’m sure JK Rowling would be happy to settle for £25 an hour. After all, she has no commuting costs, and can pick and choose the hours she works, and judging from her output lately she probably spends all day on WhatsApp instead of slaving over that next book.
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