In Publishing News This Week
Oh Meta, we know what you have done and now the courts know it too.
The next AI scraping court case gets underway. Rumours are swirling that Mark Zuckerberg knew that they were using stolen files to train their AI. This court case is wider in scope than the Anthropic case. Publishing Perspectives has an overview of this case. There are now over 100 court cases pending on AI training irregularities.
This week children’s publisher Chronicle opens their submission box for un-agented submissions. One week only. You only have a few days, so check it out fast if you have something good.
Publishing Perspectives reports that The Children’s Booker Award is open for submissions. This is the first time that the Children’s Booker prize will be awarded. And it has the same amount of prize money. We are finally legit, said every children’s writer.
Staying with children’s writing, Recent news has highlighted the downturn in reading for pleasure amongst children. This could be because of screens, or it could be the undermining of reading by spending too much time on literacy achievements in school. Speaking as a teacher- My favourite times were reading to classes. When I speak with young teachers now, they say they are under so much pressure that they have stopped reading to their class. Mark Williams weighs in with his latest essay, Harper Collins and the Reading Crisis.
Children’s writers have to maintain a squeaky clean persona so it was with real dismay that we learned down under of a children’s writer who has pled guilty to child exploitation. The violated trust is sending shock waves through the community. In the midst of all this are the books that have been enjoyed by countless children. How do you explain to children that their favourite author has been so nasty? It’s enough to turn them off reading.
Publishers Weekly has an essay on How Chic Lit lost its footing. This looks at how ‘Chic Lit’ inspired films and has morphed into contemporary women’s fiction.
Every time I see the patronising term ‘Chic Lit’ I remember a pithy comment from a writer friend that all those male gaze thrillers were just ‘Dick Lit.’ But of course, they would never be marketed as such would they?
Rise -The International Bookselling Conference was recently held in Verona and under discussion was the role Booksellers are playing in an increasingly dangerous world of attacks on free speech. Some of these booksellers were putting their lives on the line to stay open and create safe places for readers and writers.
Kathleen Schmidt has an interesting essay, Is Substack The New Book Tour. Kathleen is a book publicist, and she comments on the new trends that she sees in Book Promotion. Lately Substack has been talked about because of Lena Dunham’s memoir being featured quite heavily on book review pages.
After the roller coaster of emotions from this publishing news roundup you can be forgiven for feeling a little fragile. Katie Weiland has written about The Emotional Toll On Writers In The Modern Landscape. She has five ways to cope with the oversaturation of being constantly available.
Liz Adams has a fun essay on Anne R Allen’s blog about Writing Page Turners. It all has to do with secrets and who knows what secret each character is keeping.
Sssh Don’t Tell Anyone but this is a really good advice!
In The Craft Section,
Restarting old projects- Joe Lallo
Seeing your work clearly when editing- Susan Odev- Bookmark
Fear, phobias, and your characters- Angela Ackerman
Transitions- how often are you asking your readers to jump- Seth Harwood- Bookmark
Crafting deep scenes- Donald Maass- Bookmark
In the Marketing Section,
Author fairs – The hidden benefits- Rachel Thompson- Bookmark
Fiction Lead magnet ideas- Sandra Beckwith- Bookmark
Nicholas Erik on Facebook ads- Video. (Sign up for his excellent newsletter.) Bookmark
How Indie authors can build anthologies- Wendy Van Camp
Publishing in German- Joanna Penn interview with Skye Mackinnon- Excellent
To Finish
This is the last week that you can get the Storybundle of writing books. Kris Rusch asked the contributors in January if they had updated their popular books on craft and marketing in light of recent developments in publishing. The whole collection are updated exclusives to this Storybundle collection. I bought my first writing Storybundle about seven years ago and I remember devouring some of these books on a road trip. The beauty of Storybundle is that you get the digital files immediately and you can read them on any device- They are yours to keep. The authors get paid immediately and a percentage of your donation goes to charity. You can choose just to get 3 books for a modest charge or donate more money to get the whole lot. Check it out and share it among your writer friends. You don’t want to miss out.
Maureen
@craicer
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