Readers- The New Superheros.

 In Publishing News This Week

I am back at my desk after three weeks away and looking through the news to see what I have missed. It is all London Book Fair with side issues of AI and ways to prove human authentication on your books. 

 

While I was away, I scheduled three articles on Copyright, Literary Estates, and Artificial Intelligence to appear on my blog. Thanks to readers who shared them with others. If you missed them and want to catch up, I wrote about 

What Copyright means and what it is worth.

Why you need to understand your Literary Estate.

How Artificial Intelligence can be used ethically.

Looking over the meaty topics discussed at the London Book Fair my articles reflect some of the discussions, which is gratifying.

 

One of the meaty topics discussed at LBF was Joanna Prior’s keynote speech. Joanna is chair of the UK Literacy Trust as well as being CEO of Pan Macmillan and her speech was an admonishment that the publishing industry is focusing on the wrong crisis. “The decline of reading is a greater challenge to our industry than AI could ever be.” Her speech highlighted the challenges we all face to keep our readers. 

 

Two great London Book Fair overview posts were from Tasmina Perry and Deborah Maclaren. Tasmina wrote about the publishing trends she saw at the LBF, short books are in. Deborah had a more considered overview on the big topics that were discussed, preparing for the next generation of readers. Both these articles highlight the need for publishers to be engaged with their readers.

 

Beside the keynote speeches, a protest book was published by 10,000 authors. Don’t Steal This Book was a direct response to the UK governments plan to allow AI companies to train AI models on copyrighted work without compensation.

 

Jane Friedman writes about her concern that author societies that are sponsoring certification models highlighting human authored books may be missing the point. What use is a sticker on the book if you can’t prove and AI was not involved in writing it?

 

Meanwhile, over in The Gambia Mark Williams writes about what it is like to be a teacher with access to AI but not printed books. His comments reflect Joanna Prior’s keynote on literacy and the challenges of keeping a reader. Without readers there is no publishing industry.

 

Publishing Perspectives reports on a panel discussion at LBF that highlighted the need for publishers to make licensing deals with AI. A bad deal is better than no deal was the comment. I’m not sure that should be a business maxim, but the arguments were compelling.

 

Recently Chelle Honiker of Indie Author Magazine interviewed Draft2Digitals CEO Kris Austin on How AI is affecting The Publishing Industry.

Kris talked about the flood of AI books in the nonfiction space that they reject. He is not so worried about fiction books authored by AI. We could be inflating AI’s ability to tell a compelling story.

 

Baker and Taylor have finally fallen on their sword and filed for bankruptcy. This surprised a few commentators that thought their recent fire sale of assets might have covered the creditors; however the bills were bigger than anyone knew. They owe some eye watering sums as Publishers Weekly reports.

 

Mark Leslie Lefvbre has an interesting article on being wide and how some authors have failed to understand what that actually means. Mark has done just about every job in publishing and is a great resource for how to run an author business. Are you publishing wide but shallow?

 

Ingram Spark has put together a free book marketing course. Each of the modules are under four minutes long and they cover metadata to publicity to websites to social media marketing. If you were looking for an overview on book marketing this could be for you. You get a certificate as well. 

 

Donald Maass has been an agent for a long time. He writes an interesting article on Writer Unboxed about Reading as an Agent. What he looks for might not be what you think. This is required reading if you are submitting to agents and editors.

 

In The Craft Section,

Awaken your creativity- Sarah Hamer- Bookmark

Learning about genres makes you write better- Andromeda Romano-Lax

Base your story structure on principles not systems- Tiffany Yates Martin

How to write dark stories responsibly- K M Weiland- Bookmark

Writing uncomfortable scenes- Jami Gold- Bookmark

 

In The Marketing Section,

2 excellent posts from Rachel Thompson- Understanding Social Media Followers and Book Giveaway subscriber marketing.- Bookmark Both.

Ten tips for Newsletter swaps- Gayle Leeson- Bookmark

5 ways to make your book relevant to media- Sandra Beckwith- Bookmark

7 Kindle keywords- Dave Chesson- (Updated)

 

To Finish,

While I was away, I did not check my email every day. However, when I did, I was looking through my lists for emails from real people not the next scam email. (There were a few of those.) Recently, Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware went down a Simon and Schuster scam rabbit hole to see how far they would go before they realized that she wasn’t a genuine mark. What I found interesting is that the AI scammer did not flag her name or her actual job which is to write about dodgy practices in the publishing world. If you are reading my blog, you are likely quite up to date on new scam practices, it’s the newbie authors that they target and whose dreams they shatter. A kind word from you and a link to Victoria’s blog might save a newbie from an expensive and embarrassing mistake.

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

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Photo by Kyle Hinkson on Unsplash