“[Everyone’s] perplexed. That’s truly the best word for it,” said a source for this story in TechCrunch. The best word indeed, for an item about a company called Perplexity AI—a pun so cheesy no AI would dare imagine it.

In this episode of Self-Publishing with ALLi, Dale L. Roberts talks with Andrea Jo DeWerd, a book marketing expert, about the essentials of author branding and marketing. Andrea explains how to create a memorable brand, build a cohesive author presence, and use social media effectively. She also discusses boosting book sales through in-person events and community engagement, debunks common marketing myths, and offers practical tips for public speaking and identifying the right opportunities for your audience.

The case of publishing against the Internet Archive has come to an end. The story could be summed up, to continue the literary allusions, as a tale of two blog posts. For the Internet Archive, this is the worst of times. Their comment on the closing of the legal chapter against them is short and melancholy. At the heart of it is a simple statement, referring to September’s decision upholding the complaint in Hachette v. Internet Archive: “The Internet Archive has decided not to pursue Supreme Court review.”