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Granta Says It Will Stop Publishing Prize Winners Over AI Concerns

“For the sake of our own editorial integrity, the Granta Trust board has now taken the decision that we will no longer engage in external publishing partnerships.” - The Guardian

Why Are Romance Audiobooks Surging In Popularity?

“Romance increasingly shifting from page to ear. This boom — fuelled by pandemic-era isolation and women with sexual agency wanting to multi-task while consuming books that feature guilt-free escapism — is pushing the publishing industry to pursue audio-first strategies.” - CBC

Judy Blume, She Says, Has Written Enough

The author says, “You're living with for months, sometimes years. And you're locked up in a little room all day with them. That's why 50 years is enough. I was ready to come out into the world. Now, she owns and runs a bookstore. - NPR

Burned By AI, Granta Will No Longer Publish External Award Winning Short Stories

Ouf. "For the sake of our own editorial integrity, the Granta Trust board has now taken the decision that we will no longer engage in external publishing partnerships. We … wish our former partner, the Commonwealth Foundation, all the best in its work.” - The Guardian (UK)

What Should Ghosts Look Like In Children’s Books?

“What children know of ghosts, and at what age they know it, is murky territory. … And if you show even a very young child a picture of a ghost, in my experience they can often tell you that it is, indeed, a ghost.” - The New York Times

So, If The Obama Presidential Center Isn’t A Library Or Archive, Then What Exactly Is It?

The Obama Foundation opted not to have the National Archives and Records Administration, which keeps presidential archives, involved in the Center; it will make Obama’s papers available digitally. So what is the Obama Center? Part museum, part public park, with a branch of the Chicago Public Library. - The Christian Science Monitor

Why The New Obama Presidential Center Is Not Officially A Library

It isn’t a presidential library if it isn’t run by the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Obama Foundation had two big reasons for deciding not having NARA involved. So President Obama’s papers and archives will be made available to the public digitally while the Obama Center serves other functions. - Chicago Sun-Times

In Its Centennial Year, The Book Of The Month Club Has Become Kind Of Cool

Since its rebrand as Book of the Month (no more club) a decade ago, the subscription service has grown every year and now has over 400,000 members. Its strength, says chairman John Lippman, is human curation: “We don’t depend on algorithms to determine your next book.” - Publishers Weekly

Publishers Sue Website For Pirating

Fresh off of last month’s victory against pirate web site Anna’s Archive, 13 publishers across all segments of the industry have allied to sue yet another pirate site, WeLib, for copyright infringement. - Publishers Weekly

New Owners Roxane Gay And Debbie Millman Relaunch Online Lit Magazine The Rumpus

“We'll still be covering, with the same rigor and integrity, fiction, essays, poetry, book reviews, author interviews, and so forth,” said Millman. “But we're also going to include more design criticism, art criticism, and overall cultural coverage. The soul of the writing ... will be very similar; topically, it will be different.” - Publishers Weekly

Have New Books Gotten More Expensive? Yes, But …

Hardcovers which for years cost around $20 are now routinely marked at $30 or more. However, both publishing executives and booksellers maintain that the price of new books has not kept up with post-2020 inflation in the economy as a whole (including their own supply chains). - USA Today

“Graphic Journalist” Joe Sacco Says Penguin Random House India Censored His Book On Sectarian Riots

The Indian subsidiary of the publishing giant has withdrawn Sacco’s The Once and Future Riot, an account of the 2013 street battles between Hindus and Muslims in Muzaffarnagar. Sacco says the publisher sent him a list of edits that amounted to “finding excuses” not to release the book. - The Wire (India)

Are Most Children’s Books “Crud”?

“There are so many bad kids’ books,” Mac Barnett writes, “and kids’ books are bad in so many different ways.” He states that “a big reason for our low opinion of children’s books is simply that lots of children’s books are bad.”  - The New Yorker

The Problem With AI Writing (And The Opportunity For Human Literature)

If, as a French saying has it, “style is the man himself,” what does the style of AI writing tell us about it? For one thing, it has no fixed style, revealing that it has no fixed self. It’s happy to burn tokens saying the same thing in as many ways as you want.  - The Atlantic

If People Aren’t Reading, Why Are Bookstores Thriving?

“The bookstore boom is a story about a certain educated, culturally aspirational demographic doing what it has always done, while the literacy crisis unfolds elsewhere, namely in under-resourced schools, rural communities, and households without the discretionary income to browse a charming bookshop on a Saturday afternoon.” - LitHub

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