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ALLi's SelfPubCon Opens October 17

News Summary: ALLi’s SelfPubCon Opens October 17 with Jane Friedman Keynote

The clock is ticking down to Frankfurter Buchmesse. And that means the countdown is also underway to ALLi's annual SelfPubCon. Running on October 17–18, SelfPubCon this year tackles a single question that has been implicit in almost everything I've been reporting on this year: what is the future of self-publishing? The conference subheading is "What's Working Now and What's Next," while the strapline gets right to the point: Two days. One question: where is indie publishing going, and how do you go with it?
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Amazon Cuts KDP Uploads To Two Titles A Week

News Podcast: Amazon Cuts KDP Uploads to Two Titles a Week; Study Backs AI Detector Accuracy

On this week's Self-Publishing News podcast, a hoarse ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway covers Amazon's new KDP limit of two titles per week per format — down from ten, and another move aimed at the flood of AI-generated content. He also looks at a study suggesting AI detector Pangram may be more accurate than its critics claim, and at the SCBWI's tightened AI policy, which will ask award entrants to document the human creative process behind their work.
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OpenAI Memos Reveal Awareness Of Piracy

News Summary: OpenAI Memos Reveal Awareness of Piracy; Anthropic Claimants Get 60-Day Extension

It's interesting that in last week's edition of The Bottom Line, Jane Friedman began with a note that was essentially "sorry there's so much on AI but it really is the big news right now." Which is how I feel a lot of the time. I endeavor to keep AI news to one of the three weekly slots, but it's not always possible. Especially when, as today, it's a stuffed first slot and I have no idea what will break later in the week.
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News Summary: Wired Investigation Reveals Readers Using AI to Generate Their Own Fiction

It always offers an intriguing insight into our world when I read news items about what we do from outlets that don't usually cover literary or creative stories. So I found it a real eye-opener to take a deep dive into Wired's long piece on the new generation of indie writers (and I realize many reading this will want to put "writers" in inverted commas) using AI for storytelling. And not just because it offers a very different perspective from the one we're used to.
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Spotify Expands Its Partner Program

News Podcast: Spotify Expands Its Partner Program; Readers Use AI to Write Their Own Fiction

On this week's Self-Publishing News podcast, ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway covers Spotify's Partner Program expanding to 35 more markets, a self-published audiobook making the Speakies shortlist — and what the sponsor list says about Audible's standing. He closes with "AI in the Wild," a new study of 500,000 prompts showing readers are using AI to write fiction for themselves, raising the question of whether the biggest AI threat to writers comes from readers.
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Speakies Shortlist Features Indie Author

News Summary: Speakies Shortlist Features Indie Author; Spotify Expands Partner Program to 35 New Markets

The Speakies are the newer UK-based relative (technically the British Audio Awards) of the US' Audies Awards, celebrating the best of the year's audiobooks. Like the Audies, the Speakies are open to indie titles, which is why I make sure to spend some time scouring the shortlists and winners when they appear. And this past week the shortlist came out.
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Substack Strengthens Ties With Publishing Industry

News Summary: Substack Strengthens Ties with Publishing Industry; Pitches Platform to Fiction and Nonfiction Authors

Like many writers I have an email newsletter (though unlike many of my more disciplined colleagues I am not fastidious about posting to it regularly). It is not the platform I use, but the highest-profile longform email newsletter platform is Substack. It is also the one that tries hardest to engage with the writing and publishing community in an endeavor to make the case that it is both a valuable tool for engaging with readers and a (financially) valuable medium for writing in and of itself.
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Authors Guild Clarifies Anthropic Claims

News Podcast: Authors Guild Clarifies Anthropic Claims; Spotify Opens AI Audiobooks to All US Authors

On this week's Self-Publishing News podcast, ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway sorts through new Authors Guild clarifications on the Anthropic settlement: payments should still begin trickling through from November, but rights-reversion disputes are clouding who gets paid what, and authors whose rights reverted by August 10, 2022 are advised to claim their full 100 percent share. He also covers Spotify taking its ElevenLabs-powered audiobook creation tool out of beta for all US authors — free for five titles, with no exclusivity — and a new Frankfurter Buchmesse report finding that only 15 percent of audiobooks are made with no AI at all.
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Publishers Dispute Anthropic Payouts

News Summary: Publishers Dispute Anthropic Payouts; FutureBook Joins London Book Fair in 2027

Before anything else, a point of clarification after reading Jane Friedman's incredibly in-depth roundup of all things Anthropic. The wrangling over lawyers' fees, she has said, should not delay the onset of payments to rights holders. The first of those payments, in instances where there is clarity over who the rights holders are, should start trickling through in November.
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