On this week's Self-Publishing News podcast, ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway rounds up a busy week for indie authors: the rise of "Summerween," BookTok's new blend of sunny settings and Gothic dread; Kobo's return to big-box retail through Best Buy; and the report that Amazon has been ripping up and shredding books, including rare out-of-print titles, to train its AI. He also digs into KDP trend data showing dystopian fiction bouncing back and self-published titles claiming 38 percent of the US top 100, and closes with Ingram's new Covered platform, which puts digital advance copies in front of 50,000 booksellers and librarians.

In one of those “I thought everyone knew that already” stories, this week the book world has been up in arms at revelations that the AI industry is training its large language models, where digital titles aren’t available, on physical books. Firms are buying copies of print books and then destroying them as they scan them into their computers. Some of the titles ending up subjected to this fate are exceedingly rare and have been out of print for decades.

Clinical psychologist Bee Lim knew her illustrated book on trauma, Welcome Home: Healing Trauma and Reclaiming Wholeness, couldn’t be a standard paperback—and that she wasn’t willing to give up her IP, therapeutic arc, or choice of illustrator, her husband, concept artist Joel Timpson. In this episode, Bee shares why she chose the custom publishing route, hired her own publicist, and planned a multicountry launch. She also discusses the constraints of marketing a book as a regulated health professional.