Dan Holloway, Author at The Self-Publishing Advice Center

Self-Publishing News: Spotify’s New Basic Plan Strips Out Audiobooks

Over the past couple of years, I have reported a lot about Spotify’s entry into the audiobook market. This went from anticipation to rumor to normalization with the new subscription offering of fifteen hours of audiobook content per month, which listeners can split across any titles they want in the platform’s catalog.

Self-Publishing News: Cinema Cancels Screening of AI-Written Film

Cancel culture on the rise or institutions standing up for creatives? That’s the question that came to my mind as I read through the main story for today’s news about an AI-written film. We know many creatives feel an angst bordering on the existential about the use of AI. And nothing is as certain to raise hackles as moves that seem to endorse the artistic merit of entirely AI-generated works, especially when the AI is not really the point but just an everyday tool for production.

Self-Publishing News: Canadians Reading More Free Books Than Paid Across All Formats

More Canadians are now reading free books than paid ones across all formats. Remember what feels like many moons ago in a (just) pre-pandemic world when publishers started to get vociferous about libraries cannibalizing their sales and used it as a pretext to ramp up what they charged libraries for e-books? Today’s story feels like something that might have been leapt on as “evidence” during those fractious times.

Self-Publishing News: Meta Pauses Use of Posts for AI Training in EU and UK

It feels as though this week starts with some little victories, and those are always good things to share. I’ll start with one of the stories I featured very recently: the move by Meta to use people’s posts across its various platforms, including Instagram and Facebook, for AI training. If you recall, users of those platforms had to jump through considerable hoops—from finding the notification in the first place to composing an essay explaining why they didn’t want their creative output to train AI—to withdraw from the scheme.

Self-Publishing News: Navigating Ethical AI Platforms and UK Election Promises for Creatives

Okay, “in a gold rush, sell shovels” is a cliché and one I’ve used a few times recently, but it’s a cliché because it’s true. Ethical AI is, of course, the latest gold rush. While the most obvious beneficiary from the shovel-selling philosophy is chip manufacturer Nvidia, other piggybackers are starting to circle. Add the general existential fear among creatives to that principle and what you get is a stream of providers seeking to provide assurance around the ethical origins of AI platforms. Ethical AI is, in essence, the carbon offsetting of the new tech wave.

Self-Publishing News: Google Faces Algorithm Leak and Legal Action Over Pirated E-Books

Google has had a tough time of late. But before spending too much time bowing away at the world’s tiniest violin, it’s worth considering how many of their woes they have played at least a part in making. There's the algorithm leak and legal action over pirated e-books.

Self-Publishing News: Authors Bear Publicity Costs and IBPA Launches Innovative Voices Program

First up today comes one of those pieces that inevitably does the rounds on author websites and forums everywhere. In one of those “yes, we’ve been saying that for years” moments, it seems publicists have finally lifted the lid to the wider world on the fact that even authors whose contracts are with big publishing houses have to pay their own publicity costs.

Self-Publishing News: US Audiobook Revenue Climbs Again, But Fewer Creators Use Chatbots

How long has it been since I reported on another year of double-digit growth for audiobooks? Well, I can guarantee you that it’s as long as I have been writing this column because double-digit sales growth for audiobooks in the United States is as old as ALLi! But whereas ALLi is going strong, the rate of expansion of the audio market has finally, it would seem, succumbed to the inevitable. The Audio Publishers Association, in its sales survey, claims audiobook revenue climbed to an eye-watering $2 billion in 2023, which is a rise of 9 percent.

Self-Publishing News: Autobiography by AI Launched and Oxford University Study Reveals Writers Conflicted About AI

One of the interesting things about the recent Society of Authors survey on AI was that it captured the complexity and what I might call practical ambivalence we have toward this growing technology as a group. By complexity, I mean that AI is not just one thing. Generative AI, such as large platforms like ChatGPT and Midjourney, is only one part of a picture that includes grammar checks, metadata optimization, and even tools to help write an autobiography. By practical ambivalence, I mean that while many of us are very worried and actively critical about some parts of the technology (especially generative AI), we nonetheless use many other parts. Even some of us use the parts we also criticize.

Self-Publishing News: NYT Sues ‘Confusing’ Puzzle to Protect Wordle; Other Media Companies Sign Deals with OpenAI

I’ve often said I find it fascinating how themes can emerge that make one week’s news different from another. This week, that theme is media being, shall we say, unchilled. And yes, I am very much aware that, in writing this, at the risk of evoking the spirit of Judge Dredd, I am the media. But whatever other parlousness I may succumb to, I hope I am guilty of neither of these. The first is something I’ve covered a few times and fear I will be covering a few more. And that’s the willingness of media companies to sign deals with OpenAI allowing their content to be used to train its generative AI. This week, Vox Media and The Atlantic signed deals. They join the likes of Axel Springer, News Corp, Le Monde, and the Financial Times.

Self-Publishing News: Facebook’s AI Policy Sparks Controversy Among Creatives

If a week is a long time in politics, then in the world of technology, Facebook's AI policy sparking controversy among creatives might as well be “living memory.” This means we’re going back to the times of the sagas since we last ran a story on AI. I didn’t even run a story when the whole furore following the launch of ChatGPT-4o (which I did cover) broke as Scarlett Johansson spotted that the voice of the demo sounded a heck of a lot like her, despite her having said she didn’t want to work with OpenAI.

Self-Publishing News: Romantasy Popularity Steadies Print Sales

Last week, we looked at the figures for electronic book sales and the ways in which they are notoriously misleading in their official format. This week, there’s an interesting glimpse into print sales, particularly the genres driving the healthy levels of those sales. Thanks to Porter Anderson over at Publishing Perspectives for outlining the details of an analysis of print sales by the entertainment analysis group Circana.

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