Author Notes #14 (November 2024)

Reading lists for MPs, the lessening impact of mainstream media, dystopia on the rise, publishing agreements with AI companies, and a children's reading crisis.

Nov 29, 2024

So much has been happening in the industry over the last month I hardly know where to start. But here we go!

A reading list for MPs about the crisis in the Middle East
A group of high-profile Australian authors have put their names behind an initiative to give each of our 227 Australian MPs and Senators five books to read over Christmas, with the aim of encouraging a deeper and more nuanced conversation around the complexities of the conflict in the Middle East. This effort has been endorsed by the Jewish Council of Australia and the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network and is just an all-round brilliant idea. Here’s the list of books included so we can all seek them out:

Mainstream media can’t reach the masses any more
I highly recommend this food-for-thought piece by

Kathleen Schmidt

called ‘What Publishing Can Learn from the Election’, which discusses how the mainstream media failed to reach voters. There’s growing commentary around legacy media being unable to sell books in the way it once did, which mean it’s up to all of us to figure out how to get our stories into the right readers’ hands. This feels like an extremely challenging task, but might it be easier to have fewer gatekeepers and more niche groups who are clear about their reading tastes? This is definitely something I’ll be looking at more next year.

Dystopia dominates the bestseller lists
Dystopian books are selling like hotcakes in the US, according to this article on Rawstory, which looked at the post-election bestseller lists. As well as The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 all surging back up to the top 20 on the Amazon charts, Melania Trump’s new book Melania took out the No. 1 spot, and J. D. Vance’s novel Hillbilly Elegy featured prominently. While I love the classics, there are plenty of amazing and more recent dystopian books that have interesting takes on societal disruption and disaster: right now, I keep thinking about The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Ellison and The Future by Naomi Alderman, both of which I highly recommend.

Publishing deals with AI companies
HarperCollins has signed a deal with an unnamed AI company, who plan to compensate authors and HarperCollins to the sum of $5,000 in a shared 50-50 deal - if authors are willing to sign an agreement for their work being used to train AI. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a whole heap of commentary and opinion about the increasing creep of AI into our lives. I did talk about this in my most recent post so I don’t want to go over it too much, but I would like to draw your attention to this excellent article by James Bradley: ‘AI isn’t about unleashing our imaginations, it’s about outsourcing them. The real purpose is profit’. This article touches on a whole host of critical points in the AI debate: from the rights of authors to get paid whenever their work is used in this way, to deeper questions around why we need art that is conceptualised and made by humans.

Two contrasting articles concerning children’s books caught my eye this month: a report from the National Literacy Trust (UK) that found a ‘shocking and dispiriting’ fall in children’s reading for pleasure (sad sigh), and a BBC list of the greatest children’s books of all time. I suspect that, if researched, this trend would be repeated across many western countries, so the Beeb’s list is a great starting point to encourage more kids to engage with books. It’s good to see Aussie author Shaun Tan’s The Arrival at No. 16 too, as this book was a source of wonder for my kids and a great visual way for dyslexic readers to appreciate the power of books and stories.

SHORT(ISH) NOTES AND SHOUT-OUTS

I suspect many of you have seen already that Penguin Random House UK has withdrawn Jamie Oliver’s children’s book Billy and the Epic Escape from sale in all countries where it holds rights, including Australia and the UK, after condemnation from Australian First Nations communities over ill-conceived and damaging content. The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Corporation (NATSIEC) called for the book to be withdrawn, saying the plotline (in which the villain abducts a young First Nations girl living in foster care in an Indigenous community) contributed to the ‘erasure, trivialisation, and stereotyping of First Nations peoples and experiences’. How bizarre and dispiriting it is that this book got through editorial and went on sale in the first place. This is also a good place to highlight a section on the Creative Australia website that I came across this month, about protocols for using First Nations Cultural and Intellectual Property in the Arts.
Not strictly about publishing, but I feel it’s important to share this quote from
HEATED
:
‘The night after Trump’s election, more than 1,500 people joined a Zoom meeting held by the youth-led Sunrise Movement—the group that popularized climate activism and the Green New Deal during the first Trump administration via acts of civil disobedience. On that call, the Sunrise executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay called on climate- and environment-concerned citizens to become even more bold in their activism than they were during the first Trump administration. “I think we can be a little audacious right now,” Shiney-Ajay told me prior to the call. “I think the situation that we are in is so bleak that nothing but the most audacious plan could possibly get us out of it.”
I like the idea of everyone - whatever sector they work in - getting a little audacious right now. There is much to lose and a lot to work for.
In this context,
Natasha Lester
’s beautiful article ‘I Wrote a Book About a Woman Who Fought ...’ was also an excellent read this month. Here’s an excerpt:
I had a moment of despair last week when contemplating this book of mine that will be published in April 2025. Why would anyone want to read a book like this now? I thought. Why would anyone be interested in historical fiction, in the events of the past, when the events of the present are so up close and personal right now.
But then I remembered. I wrote a book about a woman who fought. A woman who found others who believed in the same things as she did and who convinced them to join her. A woman who persevered despite loss and pain, despite having to send her children away, despite the fact that entire cities were shut down while police hunted for her and her friends. I wrote a book about a woman who made a difference, a huge and enduring difference, a woman who proves to us all that one brave, selfless human being, supported by other brave selfless human beings, can change the world.
That’s exactly the kind of story we need right now, isn’t it?
I wholeheartedly agree with Natasha!
Finally, Stephen King quit Twitter, and Taylor Swift is causing ructions by self-publishing. Yep, it’s been a big month in the book world!

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on any or all of these newsy items - or anything else you’ve seen this month that’s captured your attention in the industry. Have a great weekend, and here’s a recap in case you missed any of my posts in November (there’ll be a new post for paid subscribers on Monday):