London and Paris. The eponymous cities of the Dickens classic that haunted many a schoolday of mine. Paris, in the throes of a bloody revolution. London, checks Cliff Notes and memory alike and utterly fails to remember. Two and a quarter centuries later, and as book fairs loom in each of those great cities, we again have news from both.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
And again it is Paris where the scenes are febrile. You will recall, I am sure, that the French literary industry's less than amicable relations with Amazon have featured in these column inches before. Most notably when French booksellers refused to stock shortlisted titles for one of the country's leading prizes after Amazon imprints were included.
The sentiment has, of course, spread wider, being cited as one of the reasons for the success of Bookshop.org. But France is back at the heart of things now as Amazon announces it is pulling its sponsorship from the Paris book festival.
French Booksellers Take a Stand
The announcement comes after French booksellers claimed Amazon was enabling vast quantities of AI-generated content to flood its platform. The association had threatened to boycott the festival in protest at Amazon's involvement.
This is a new front in an old battle. And whilst it may seem as though there is much in common between the booksellers of France and the authors of the UK over AI concerns, the strength of longstanding hostility is very different.
London Book Fair Addresses AI
Which brings us back across the Channel to the UK, home of the concerned open letter, where we are as this goes to press during London Book Fair. ALLi will, tomorrow, be holding its fabulous Indie Author Lab. Today, ALLi will be center stage at Author HQ as Orna joins a stellar panel to talk about being an authorpreneur.
For London's take on the threats of AI, the place to be is Author HQ at 10:00 on Thursday where the title is “Mission Impossible? Protecting Authors Rights in the Age of AI,” after which you may, if that's the way the panel has swung you, take the brief trip across the fair to an 11:00 a.m. session on exploiting your AI licensing rights.
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