Author Notes #15 (January 2025)
Publishing and Trump; new ideas to help authors with AI; celebrating Julia Donaldson; authors opening bookshops; and will BookTok survive?
Welcome to my first Author Notes for 2025! These monthly posts are a round-up of things that have caught my eye lately in the writing and publishing industry. As always, there’s a lot to talk about, so let’s get into it.
The publishing business in the new Trump era
Publishers Weekly took a look at what publishing might expect in the US under the second Trump administration, and it doesn’t make for fun reading: outlining threats to funding and free expression, along with concerns about tariffs and libel suits. Nevertheless, Jonathan Karp, CEO of Simon & Schuster, is quoted as suggesting that publishers lean into a broader perspective, saying: ‘Let’s not forget that the best thing that we can do as book publishers is to publish books. And as citizens, we’ve got to fight and respond at the local level, where our communities are affected and where our voices can most clearly be heard. This is so much bigger than just publishing.’
You can read the full article here.
Can ‘Created by Humans’ mitigate authors’ fears around AI?
The ‘Created by Humans’ rights platform has launched in the US: a venture led by Trip Adler (Scribd) and Jen Singerman that promises to ‘safeguard American creativity’. The program is the official AI licensing partner of the US Authors Guild, and hopes to protect published texts against unlicensed usage by generative AI. The idea is that authors can offer their texts for a range of AI purposes via the site, and will be fairly remunerated under licensing agreements. Big-name authors already supporting the platform include James Patterson, Walter Isaacson, Susan Orlean and Viet Thanh Nguyen. You can read more about this one in this Publishing Perspectives article.
Also reported in Publishing Perspectives, a push by the US-based Audio Publishers Association and the UK’s Audio Publishers Group for responsible consumer labelling of audiobooks read and/or produced with AI technology. The two organisations have joined together to issue a concise labelling guide, but at the moment there is no legal requirement to put these in place and this is best practice only.
What intrigued me most in this article was the mention of a Jane Austen work being read by AI voices, which led me to this multiple-AI-voiced reading of Pride and Prejudice on YouTube. Although this is in some parts laughable and nowhere near a human-voiced reading, it shows the advances already made in AI as there’s more expression than I’ve heard before in AI readings. If you have a listen, let me know what you think!
Will BookTok continue?
It looks like TikTok - and therefore #BookTok - will probably survive in the longer term, but while it was under threat, Publishers Weekly did an article on the effects of the demise of BookTok, and it was pretty interesting that some saw it as an opportunity for evolution in author-reader relationships, talking about the importance of direct author-to-reader communication. Hello Substack! (It gets a mention.)
I found it interesting that authors are mentioned so much in this piece, as they’re mostly cut out of the BookTok scenario, which is very much based on reader-to-reader recommendations. However, I’m certainly hopefully that the design of Substack will allow authors to build something valuable here as part of our long-term career plans, because there are many ways of using this space to showcase our work, both for authors who like to stay in the shadows and post only about books and fiction, to those who enjoy chatting to readers and sharing lots of their lives. It’s nice to see the industry recognising that value too: it feels much nicer than the publisher-encouraged algorithm-pleasing platform-building on social media, which has been pushed hard at authors for a long time now.
There’s a new UK No. 1 bestselling author
The long-undisputed queen of children’s literature, JK Rowling, was knocked off the top of the British bestselling authors list a couple of weeks ago by Julia Donaldson, whose gorgeous books - from The Gruffalo to the A Squash and a Squeeze - have surely been a feature of most book-loving children’s lives this century.
As reported in The Telegraph, The Bookseller magazine credited the success of Donaldson, 76, to her ‘slow and steadier’ sales, compared to Rowling’s ‘fastest-selling titles in history and a string of the biggest publishing events of the 21st century’.
Since Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone came out in 1997, Rowling has since sold more than one million copies each of 13 different titles in the UK. In contrast, while Donaldson has written more than 210 books (!!!!!) since 1993, she has only sold more than one million copies of three. Her sales surged with the release of The Gruffalo in 1999.
The Telegraph also did a Rowling v. Donaldson stats showdown, in which under the ‘Biggest Controversy’ section they note that while Rowling has come under fire for her views on transgender rights in recent years, the biggest controversy they could find about Julia is that in 2014 one of her characters smoked a cigar! (For which she had to apologise - I mean, thank god Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton aren’t publishing today!)
Finally, the Telegraph notes that despite a worth of an estimated 85 million pounds, Donaldson, whose husband of 52 years died last year, previously told the paper that the couple had spent their weekends foraging for mushrooms, taking long walks in Sussex and singing at home together while Donaldson played the piano. Brilliant! I don’t think they make authors like this any more. What a legend.
Do you have a favourite Donaldson book? Ours is The Snail and the Whale.
Authors owning bookshops
I always love hearing about authors who own or work in bookshops, and this one is a beauty. Apparently encouraged and inspired by such literary friends as Ann Patchett, the author and owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, and author Emma Straub, the owner of Books Are Magic in Brooklyn, The Vaster Wilds author Lauren Groff has opened the Lynx in Gainesville, Fla., which emphasises books that are currently banned in Florida’s schools and libraries, as well as books by Florida authors. Please visit the link to the bookshop here, and take a look at a) the beautiful exterior and interior of this store, and b) the surprising books highlighted under the ‘banned in Florida’ banner.
Their mission statement says, ‘The Lynx is a community effort, aiming to uplift books and authors so often banned and challenged, especially those in our home state of Florida. We seek to uplift the voices of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ authors, whose stories are highly represented on the lists of challenged and banned titles. We believe in the power of using books to build up and foster communities, conversations, and change.’
What a beautiful and inspiring thing to do!
SHORT NOTES AND SHOUT-OUTS
Authors including Ta-Nehisi Coates and Sarah Silverman are suing Meta, alleging that Meta knowingly used pirated books to train its AI systems, which isn’t really a surprise. In fact, as Zuckerberg embraces his ‘masculine energy’ and his pig hunting rather than his fact checking, I’m not really sure what to do about Meta socials at the moment. I’m hanging on to my Facebook author page simply because I have a few lovely readers that I connect with on there, and I enjoy Insta and don’t seem to see the vileness that others speak of at the moment, but as it’s Meta owned it still concerns me.
On 13th February, my fellow WA author and good mate
’s Invisible Boys will reach your screens via Stan - in a 10-part series that looks AMAZING! Please tune in and enjoy Holden’s brilliant story.Congrats to another epic WA author
who is releasing her new novel, The Bad Bridesmaid, this week, and also has a new podcast with her best bud and fellow author Anthea Hodgson called Reading Between Deadlines. You can follow Rachael to find out all about her life lit and romance books, which regularly top the charts in Australia.Finally, thanks to everyone who completed the poll last week. Of those who responded, it’s looking like about 25-30% are here predominantly for the writing insights, which is really useful for me as I can go more confidently into tailoring how I can connect with writers and readers. And I’m excited to see that there’s a group who are keen to read about my books and follow my fiction here - there’s a lot more to come, and I’ll let you know more as I figure it out.
In case you missed any of my January posts:
As the weeks get busier and school term begins, I have a looming deadline and I’m not doing so well with it right now - so I may only post every fortnight for a month or so, in order to stay on track. My Writing Journal, Author Notes and In Case You Missed It (For Paid Subscribers) will definitely continue, but bear with me if I can’t get to any more articles straight away! And please check out my back catalogue, which now contains over 80 articles on mindset, writing and publishing.
Could I love Lauren Groff anymore?
Hmmm, let me think...no i could not!
This was a great summary of what’s going on! I’m completely in the dark about news stuff these days. Can’t bring myself to look