Among the books being flung into the fiery pit this time around: Walter Isaacson’s “dull, insight-free doorstop” biography of Elon Musk; Paris Hilton’s “vapid and vaporous” memoir; Tom Hanks’ “bland busman’s holiday dressed up as literary fiction”; and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “hollow PR exercise.” - LitHub
In 1998, Michelle Tea, who started the first series of events called "Drag Queen Story Hour," published her first novel with Semiotext(e), publisher of William S. Burroughs and Andrea Dworkin. Now Hedi El Kholti, Semiotext(e)'s co-editor (and Colm Tóibín's partner), will host Tea's new imprint, Dopamine. - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
One of the big debates which lasted up to the Renaissance was about who invented writing. With both archaeology and chronology all but unknown, what thinkers had to go on was largely the Hebrew Bible and Graeco-Roman writers. - The Conversation
The ratification follows 10 months of negotiations and multiple rejected contracts, including one proposed by Powell's management in August and another in November. - Publishers Weekly
The writers, including Pulitzer Prize winners Taylor Branch, Stacy Schiff and Kai Bird told the court on Tuesday that the companies infringed their copyrights by using their work to train OpenAI's GPT large language models. - Reuters
An author called Demetrious Polychron wrote and self-published a "pitch-perfect" (his word) sequel titled The Fellowship of the King. Then he sued Tolkien's estate and Amazon, claiming the streaming series The Rings of Power infringed his copyright. Oh, goodness, did that backfire … - The Washington Post (MSN)
Less than a decade ago, readers, authors, and publishers put a lot of faith in the site and the ability of its user-written reviews to launch a book into bestseller territory. But with the repeated "dumpster fires" (as one author called them) of recent years, the site's authority is waning. - The Guardian
The parties, which began in May, take place on rooftops, in parks and at bars. The premise is simple: Show up with a book, commit to vanquishing a chapter or two and chat with strangers about what you’ve just read. - The New York Times
The annual honor by the Association of American Publishers normally goes to a house in a beleaguered country (e.g., Guatemala, Bangladesh, Venezuela) who has "demonstrated courage and fortitude in defending freedom of expression" — but this year's candidates told AAP they were scared of the hostile scrutiny the award would bring. - AP
A few students at Boyle County High School in central Kentucky learned that their school district had quietly banned more than 100 titles under a notoriously vague state law — and they and their parents raised the alarm loudly enough to attract statewide media attention and get the ban reversed. - The Nation
"What we need, what I’m going to establish, is an ever-expanding phalanx of Wikipedia editors to create, reframe, and defend these pages, which are treated by more and more of the human population as both encyclopedia and news source." - Harper's
In 2022, less than half a percent of books even cleared 100,000. But this is the financial model on which the publishing industry operates: a small number of titles generate sufficient profit to keep the lights on, offsetting the vast majority of the rest. - The Walrus
A German Jew named Curt Bloch spent two years, with two other people, living in a little crawl space in the Dutch city of Enschede. Along with food, his protectors brought him the materials to produce 95 issues of an original publication he called The Underwater Cabaret. - The New York Times
On Halloween, 2023, the British Library suffered a massive cyberattack, which rendered its web presence nonexistent, its collections access disabled, and even its wifi fried. - Public Books
Amazon certainly doesn't seem to want to solve the issue by, say, verifying review writers. Now it's asking Goodreads users, along with a team of volunteers, to solve the one-star slams that can destroy writers' careers. - NPR
