The freedom to read is a feel-good cause, and maybe an issue typically associated with concerned parents and school boards could use a little glamour. But Dua Lipa’s project highlights how the public discourse around bans has become detached from the ground reality of access to books. - The Atlantic
The Anthropic payout will deliver $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 works, shared among the authors and publishers who hold rights to them. While the settlement is believed to be the largest in the history of U.S. copyright law, many authors and creators still don’t view it as a win. - TechCrunch
The book is flattering, fabricated and absolutely packed with em dashes. It bears all the signs of A.I. slop. I clicked on the author, one John Crane Miller. His bio page described him as a “seasoned biographer and cultural analyst,” and his portrait was a widely used stock photo. - The New York Times
The school board of Clay County (mostly suburbs of Jacksonville) has ordered an unusually large selection, even by Florida standards, of titles off its public school bookshelves. Now some of its members are debating “what would be a high-level function for that space” instead. (One official suggested school stores.) - WUSF (Tampa)
“A federal judge has approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement in which artificial intelligence company Anthropic will pay thousands of authors about $3,000 per book after using pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot.” - AP
Stabilizing a modest number of impactful, sustainable nonprofit literary organizations via large, annual gifts puts them in the best position to do what they do best—which is find great books to publish, support translations, and dream up new ways to reach readers—rather than having to spend so much time drumming up funding. - Publishing Perspectives
“Senate Bill 4925, a partisan effort to control materials in public schools, … was introduced June 24 by Republican Senators. … Like its companion legislation, House Bill 7661, SB 4925 would amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to prohibit the use of federal funding for ‘sexually oriented material’ in public schools.” - Publishers Weekly
“(The state) is doing something unusual, attempting to create a common canon of books that all students statewide will be required to read. The list was approved last month by the Republican-led Texas State Board of Education and is in the process of being finalized. It will take effect starting in 2030.” - The New York Times
Preserve this language (or species or building or mine) or else surrender to indifference, cynicism, and nihilism. But is that ever the choice we face? - The New Yorker
New covers - foil-stamped! Or colorfully graphic-novel-esque! - famous translators, deckled edges, and marketing moves try to set apart various versions of The Odyssey for the surprisingly robust market. - The New York Times
Why? “Digital attention span is at an all-time low. … You’re almost definitely going to spend more time looking at a zine than anything you see scrolling. It’s more interesting and more real.” - The Guardian (UK)
“Contemporary readers remain as eccentric as ever. Some buy two copies of each book: one to read messily and another to display smartly on the shelf. ... And many, many of them annotate. Furiously. Dedicatedly. Fanatically.” - Irish Times
A”fter outgrowing several smaller downtown locations, the municipal dream of a monumental downtown library was financed through a $2.5m municipal bond measure approved in 1921” - and now it houses 89 miles of books. - The Guardian (UK)
One of the reasons TikTok’s book-review videos, known collectively as BookTok, have become so popular—and powerful in the publishing world—is that they offer a human-based, quasi-critical recommendation portal for fans and genre devotees to connect, commiserate, and promote their favorite work. - The New Yorker
