Opening the Purse: Public Money & Indie Authors: DEBBIE YOUNG, PETER URPETH, GEMMA SELTZER, NICOLA SOLOMONS

We hear a lot about BookTok's positive influence on the creative world, especially among nascent young readers (alongside what we hear about its deleterious influence on the world's youth). In a scenario as old as Socrates, we have booksellers crediting BookTok with rescuing an industry as legislative crackdowns and curfews the world over would have us believe TikTok is an existential threat to the world's young (and some whisper from op-ed columns whether those two statements might refer to the same thing).

In this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi Member Q&A podcast, hosts Michael La Ronn and Sacha Black discuss whether an author can safely use a real band's name in a novel title, including how to check for trademarks, why disclaimers won't shield you from lawsuits, and when it's worth consulting an intellectual property attorney.

For those of you waiting to receive some kind of compensation in the Anthropic lawsuit (and indeed those who are waiting on other potential lawsuits and wondering if anything other than hot air is ever likely to come of them), the wait is one step closer to being over. A judge has issued the final approval for the $1.5 billion settlement in the class action case of Bartz v. Anthropic. This will see each of the 91.3 percent of titles in the eligible class whose owners came forward receive payment.