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Mediascout

Ingram Mediascout Offers Film Rights Exposure for Indie Authors: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

In my day job in higher education, I am, like many others, winding down for the holiday season. But in the book world, we seem to have stumbled into a particularly busy time for news. So expect more than one story from each column this week. I begin with particularly exciting news for indie authors looking to extract the maximum return from all of the rights they own in their work. Ingram has just gone live with its Mediascout program.
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Canva Unveils AI Tools

Canva Unveils AI Tools, Including Image Generation; Law Professors Challenge Meta’s Copyright Use: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

This week’s AI news focuses on two issues of great interest to indie authors. I will start with Canva. In part because I haven’t talked about them for a while. And partly because this news picks up from the last time I did talk about them. Which was last year, when they made a lot of people unhappy by increasing the price of its Pro offering from a flat $120 per year for a team license to $10 a month per team member.
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Books Exempt From Latest US Tariffs

Books Exempt from Latest US Tariffs, but Printing Materials May Be Hit: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

You will probably have noticed an absence of reporting on what has been an almost constant in the regular news media: the impact of the various new international trade tariffs. That is because there has been considerable lack of clarity on the impact this would have on the book business and our particular corner of it. This week we learned a lot more. Tl;dr: books are exempt from the latest round of tariffs imposed on trade imports into the US.
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Self-Publishing | With ALLi | News Analysis & | Commentary | Proudly Sponsored By | Bookvault | Miblart | Dan Holloway | S…

NaNoWriMo Shuts Down, AI Lawsuits Consolidated, and Amazon Adds Kindle Recaps: Self-Publishing with ALLi featuring Dan Holloway

On this episode of the Self-Publishing News Podcast, Dan Holloway reports that National Novel Writing Month, known as NaNoWriMo, has announced it will not officially take place this November, citing financial and reputational concerns. He also covers the latest in AI and copyright, including the consolidation of major lawsuits against tech companies, protests outside Meta’s London offices, and new research suggesting copyrighted materials have been used to train AI models. Finally, he discusses Amazon’s new AI-powered Kindle Recap feature and questions around whether authors have consented to its use.
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AI Copyright Lawsuits

AI Copyright Lawsuits Consolidated as Authors Protest Meta’s Use of Shadow Library: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

For some time, there have been several AI copyright lawsuits brought by rights holders against tech firms, each focusing on how they trained their generative models and whether they breached copyright in doing so. Now, twelve of those cases have been consolidated, including the highest profile of all—the one brought by (inter alia) Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates—during which Meta’s now-infamous internal comms about LibGen were released.
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Kindle Recaps

AI-Powered Kindle Recaps Launched for Series Readers; TikTok Ban Delayed: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

Users of Amazon’s Kindle (in the US for now, but surely to be widened) now have access to a new “recaps” feature. Kindle Recaps is designed for people who like book series. As the title suggests, it allows readers to refresh their memories about what happened earlier in the series while they are reading the latest installment.
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Alliance Of Independent Authors | Self-Publishing News | April 5, 2025 | With Dan Holloway

NaNoWriMo Is Closing Down After Two Decades: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

“So long and thanks for all the fish” is one of the most famous quotations from my childhood. It is, of course, the title of the fourth book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series—and the last line spoken by the dolphins as they exit Earth before its destruction. Whatever Adams’s intention, it is a phrase I have always associated with wistful goodbyes.
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Self-Publishing | With ALLi | News Analysis & | Commentary | Proudly Sponsored By | Bookvault | Miblart | Dan Holloway | S…

Former Book Retailer of the Year Disappears from High Street: Self-Publishing with ALLi featuring Dan Holloway

On this episode of the Self-Publishing News Podcast, Dan Holloway reports on academic publisher Taylor & Francis using AI to translate books into English, sparking backlash from translators. He also covers OpenAI’s controversial Studio Ghibli–style image filter and its copyright implications and notes the end of WH Smith’s presence on the UK high street as the retailer shifts focus to airport book sales.
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W H Smith

W H Smith Sale Signals Shift in Book Retailing: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

Occasionally, I come across a story that may have limited reach but strikes a very personal chord. I hope that, like the best chefs, if I season my reporting sparingly enough with them, I get to indulge without too much offense. This is one of those stories. One of the UK’s most famous and longstanding retailers, W H Smith, has been sold. The simple blue-and-white signs bearing its name will no longer frequent the high street.
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Authors Call For Compensation

Authors Call for Compensation as Meta Faces Backlash Over AI Training with Pirated Books: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

The “Meta used pirated copies of my books to train its AI” scandal is most definitely not going away. A recap for anyone who hasn’t been on the internet since last Thursday: The Atlantic published a search facility for the aggregated piracy site LibGen. Writers have been using it and finding out that their titles are on the list (including two of mine). Meta gave the go-ahead from the highest level to use LibGen to train its LLaMA AI. Allegedly, that highest level knew it was a piracy site. Now, those writers call for compensation (inter alia!).
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Pirated Books

Meta Faces Backlash Over AI Training with Pirated Books; Unbound Shuts Down: Self-Publishing with ALLi Featuring Dan Holloway

On this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, Dan Holloway reports on growing outrage after authors discovered their titles among pirated books used to train Meta’s AI model. A searchable LibGen database, highlighted by The Atlantic, has sparked widespread concern over copyright violations. Dan also covers the collapse of Unbound, a crowdfunding-based publisher, and what it means for indie authors.
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