“(The shops), many of them tucked away ... inside buildings, have long offered a refuge and a window to a freer world for some mainland Chinese readers seeking ideas suppressed at home. But these spaces now are under threat following a wave of bookseller arrests over alleged sedition under a 2024 national security law.” - AP
After Mr. Putin declared all-out war on Ukraine in 2022, he unleashed a devastating crackdown on free speech. That was initially confined to criticism of the war. Over time it spread, attacking a range of cultural expression. Now, the Kremlin is placing literature squarely in its cross hairs. - The New York Times
Elsevier announced the launch of Nora AI, an AI-powered assistant available within Elsevier e-books through VitalSource's Bookshelf platform. Nora AI enables users to ask questions and receive personalized, evidence-based answers drawn directly from Elsevier content. - Publishers Weekly
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of students enrolled in Yiddish-language online courses exploded – not only in the United States but also in Canada, Mexico and Latin America, Europe and elsewhere. … At the same time, organizations like the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Yiddish Book Center have pushed for a new perception of Yiddish.” - The Conversation
“(The) gap between the rapid expansion in available titles and slowing revenue growth is creating new pressure across the industry. ... More titles are competing for a finite amount of listening time, raising the value of established audiences and making it harder for individual projects to break through.” - TheWrap (MSN)
“The reality is that our reading choices are directed and massaged at every turn. … And who are the persuaders? They’re the booksellers, the supermarket stock buyers, the publishing houses and their ranks of marketers and publicists. And, more recently, persuasion often comes from (social media). How is all this changing publishing?” - The Guardian
“(She) produc(ed) 12 novels, four volumes of poetry, one collection of short stories, and an autobiography between 1977 and 2002. … Kusama’s novels are dark, violent, and, in many cases, clearly informed by her decade in New York, no matter how emphatically she entreated readers to interpret them otherwise.” - Artnet
“Expert Intelligence (is) a feature that allows someone reading an e-book purchased on Google Play's e-bookstore to interact with the title — by asking questions about the book, taking a quiz after reading it, or producing an infographic of key data.” And it respects copyright. - Publishers Weekly
Arion bills itself as the only printer in the country that makes books entirely by hand under one roof, from casting metal type to printing pages to binding them together into exquisite volumes prized by collectors. - The New York Times
“Many contributors, especially prominent politicians or CEOs, employ speechwriters or hire a Beltway writing shop,” he wrote. “How different is that from using AI to streamline an essay?” - The Atlantic
“She says her translation methods have become more sophisticated and that enough time has passed for her to see some flaws in her work. … The new edition will be longer, she says, and will better reflect the differing social worlds of Homer’s poem.” - AP
AI has both clarified what we should be doing when we teach writing and made it much harder to teach writing than in the days prior to the technology’s existence. - InsideHigherEd
A cyber attack on one of the country's major publishing distributors has left bookshops and authors struggling to fill their shelves in the lead-up to their busiest trading period. - ABC Australia
“The employee worked at Amazon’s VGT3 warehouse, which is housed in the same facility as LAS8, where Amazon operates its print-on-demand business. … The Amazon employee I talked to described what that operation looks like from the warehouse floor.” - 404 Media
