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Spotify Profit

Spotify Celebrates its First Full Year of Profit: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

Spotify is excited. And it clearly thinks we should be excited, too. The company has been around for seventeen years (I am sure I have mentioned this before, but if you have even a passing interest in Spotify, the relationship between tech and the arts, or just cracking good television, you should check out the Netflix series The Playlist, which tells the story of Spotify’s early years using some clever narrative devices). And 2024 was its first full year of profitability.
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Simon & Schuster

Simon & Schuster Drops Blurbs, Encyclopaedia Britannica Eyes IPO, WH Smith Faces Uncertain Future: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

The second round-up of the week has an interesting common thread. Each of the three stories represents the end of an era in some way. The first is more an item of amusing good riddance—an amuse-bouche in every sense. Simon & Schuster has announced that it won’t be pushing authors and editors to paste puff quotes on their covers.
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Human Authored

Authors Guild Launches Human Authored Certification; Copyright Office Releases AI Report: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

You may have noticed that AI is back in the news in a big way, with new discussions about what it means to create "human authored" work. And while I am not, strictly speaking, writing a column about DeepSeek, the entry of another hugely competent and vastly hyped generative AI platform into the fray clearly has implications for us all—not least of which is the demonstration of the vulnerability of whole marketplaces to activities in a single tech sector. As if we needed reminding after the whole FTX debacle and many others before it.
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The Audies

Indie Authors Shine at The Audies; AI and Bookstore Events Make Waves: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

The Audies, run by the Audio Publishing Association, are the industry’s most prestigious awards for audiobooks. And they are of particular interest to us because they have no barriers to entry for indie authors. Indeed, as I have reported over the years, we are sometimes nominated and have even been known to win (2021’s Heroine by Mary Jane Wells). If I had ever been so bold as to proclaim, “The indies are coming!” I would be frustrated at the slow progress over the past few years.
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Bookshop.org

Bookshop.org Expands into Ebooks, Opening New Doors for Indie Authors: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

Bookshop.org is, you will recall, the platform that enables people to buy books wherever they are based and direct a slice of the sales to a local independent bookstore of their choice. It gained publicity and traction during the pandemic, and that has continued—but until now, the focus has been on printed books. Now, Bookshop.org is moving full-on into ebooks.
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Reading Skills

Creative Thinking and Curiosity on the Rise, but Reading Skills Decline: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

Last week saw the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, which brought some concerning insights about reading skills. I wish I could report that publishing was front and center of the global agenda—or even that a swathe of AI discussions zoomed in on copyright-adjacent themes. Of course, that wasn’t the case. But it was the case that one of the key annual reports to accompany the event has some interesting (alarming or encouraging or both, depending on which side of the fence you fall—or, indeed, whether you prefer your fence ride to be astride) findings for us.
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AI Summit

AI Summit Planned at Bologna Book Fair: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

If the TikTok drama has done one thing, it has been to keep AI stories at bay. Though the news that tech giants are combining their efforts behind a $500 billion new AI venture unpretentiously monikered Stargate won’t have gone unnoticed. But AI is definitely not off the menu for 2025. We learned this week that the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, the event that traditionally kicks off the global conference calendar, will be scheduling in a whole day for an AI Summit. Astute observers and satirists alike will no doubt have noted with wry interest that the event is timetabled for April 1st.
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TikTok Switches Off

TikTok Switches Off Then Back On (for Now): Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

As storytelling goes, the “what will happen with TikTok?” saga would probably get the editorial note, “one damn thing after another,” with a request to “slow down already. It’s been a more than busy few days. The long and the short of it is that, contrary to the expectations of many observers and the expressed wishes of both the incoming and outgoing administrations, TikTok did indeed “go dark” on Sunday.
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Publishing Scam

Publishing Scam Exposed as Libraries Shape Audiobook Trends: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

Let’s take a pause from talking about TikTok bans (I will inevitably be back there on Thursday when we find out more about the actual new landscape). First up, an opportunity to celebrate some good news: the exposure of a major publishing scam. It’s always satisfying to report on the downfall of a scam, and thank you to Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware for such a detailed account of three arrests and charges for people allegedly behind a multimillion-dollar scam masquerading as publisher services.
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Supreme Court

Supreme Court Upholds TikTok Ban as Creators Face Uncertainty: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

As I write, the Supreme Court has just unanimously upheld the ban that would see TikTok disappear in the U.S. this Sunday. Over the week following the Supreme Court hearing, it has become clear that Justices of all stripes would actually be happy for the ban to come into force, as they seemed unconvinced that freedom of expression rights applied through the Chinese-owned app, and they also seemed assured that any switch-off could easily be reversed if the situation changed and ByteDance divested.
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Created By Humans

Created By Humans Launches; Print Book Sales Rise in 2024: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

Created By Humans has launched. I will confess, I thought it had done so already—the hype around the AI rights site has been so great. For those who are unaware (though all readers here will be familiar), this is a site where authors can register their copyrighted works if they are interested in controlling and potentially monetizing the use of their copyrighted work. The site, founded by Scribd’s Trip Adler and Jen Singleman, is the rights partner organization for the Society of Authors.
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