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Spotify Launches ElevenLabs-Powered Audiobook Creation Tool

News Summary: Spotify Launches ElevenLabs-Powered Audiobook Creation Tool; Voice Actors Sue AI Companies

Spotify joined up with the AI voice generation platform ElevenLabs last year to allow rights holders who created audiobooks using ElevenLabs to upload those books to Spotify. They have just announced they will be taking this collaboration a step further in a feature that in June will be launched as an invitation-only beta. I'll quote the key sentence from the Investor Day statement on this: "Built directly into Spotify for Authors, and powered by ElevenLabs' digital voice technology, authors can now access seamless audiobook generation and publishing without exclusive contracts."
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Commonwealth Short Story Prize Winner Accused Of Using AI

News Summary: Commonwealth Short Story Prize Winner Accused of Using AI; Judges Face Impossible Dilemma

This week I feel we reached the peak "oh good grief, what now?" moment of the AI scandal hypercycle. And to be honest, I am genuinely not sure whether the whole thing feels more Woodward and Bernstein or Arthur Miller. In short, this week we saw serious shade cast on the Commonwealth Short Story Prize winner Jamir Nazir. Nazir's story, "The Serpent in the Grove," was straightaway called out by several highly qualified people for being AI-generated.
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Anthropic Settlement Clears Fairness Hearing

News Summary: Anthropic Settlement Clears Fairness Hearing; Payout Expected for 93% of Eligible Titles

The Anthropic settlement has just jumped through one of the final hoops before people can expect the courts to order payment. May 14 saw the so-called "fairness" hearing. Now I will preface this as always by saying I am not an expert in the law, and certainly not US as opposed to UK law. On the other hand I've read a lot of coverage of legal cases over the years of reporting for this column (and even in my spare time).
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Bookless Bookstore

News Summary: Audible Opens ‘Bookless Bookstore’ Pop-Up in New York’s Bowery

My literary heart is, and has always been, torn between two worlds. On the one hand is the sensory delight of the dark, dusty library that started with an almost sacred room in my parents' house and has brought me to and kept me in the myriad libraries of Oxford, where I've spent four decades losing myself in physical text. But there is also nothing quite like the electricity of a live show. Which is why I spent more than a decade running spoken word shows, and why anything that brings the book to a live audience will grab my attention.
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AI-Generated Scams

News Summary: New AI-Generated Scams Target Authors with Fake Book Fair and Radio Invitations

Thanks to Nate Hoffelder's morning coffee for the heads-up on a new warning from everyone's favorite scambuster, Victoria Strauss. The subject of her latest exposé is two more entries into the increasingly overstuffed canon of AI-generated scams targeting authors. Both of these follow the same trajectory. They begin with a very eloquently composed (or, at least, composed without the scam signs we've been told to look out for over decades) email request. And end, of course, with a special deal and some bonus extras, all for a reasonable (!) fee.
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UK Comics Market Grows

News Summary: UK Comics Market Grows 14%; Survey Shows Creators Struggle Despite Industry Boom

I always enjoy reporting on comics and graphic novels. This is a huge part of our ecosystem, and one where indies can flourish, yet one that rarely gets the coverage it deserves. A new report on the industry has some very interesting findings. It suggests this is a market that is at once booming among readers (the market grew 14 percent in 2025) and driving creators to the edge.
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BookTok Bestseller List

News Summary: First BookTok Bestseller List Dominated by Romance; Publishers Sue Meta over AI Training

A few interesting pieces of news with which to end the week. The one I found most interesting is the long-anticipated release of the first (UK for now, following a trial in Germany) BookTok Bestseller list. In a shocking turn of events that no one could have foreseen, seventeen of the top twenty titles are romance and romantasy, with the likes of Rebecca Yarros, Chloe Walsh, and Sarah J. Maas dominating. It is also no surprise to see the ur-text of dark academia, Donna Tartt's The Secret History, standing proud in the chart.
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Oscars Require Human Actors And Authors

News Summary: Oscars Require Human Actors and Authors; Canadian Publishing Survey Reveals AI Concerns

From time to time in the past few years, major, globally recognized red carpet events in the creative sphere have issued policies on AI and its eligibility for entry into their sanctum sanctorum. Most notable among them was the Grammys. Until now. The Motion Picture Academy of America has updated the rules governing eligibility for the Oscars.
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Audible To Discontinue Legacy Royalty Model

News Summary: Audible to Discontinue Legacy Royalty Model; All Creators Must Switch to New System by Year-End

The end of last week saw the latest in a string of announcements that's been ongoing over many years and that can all be basically summarized as "Audible changes its royalty model." You will remember that the last time this happened it was to announce a new model that effectively followed the Kindle Unlimited format (or indeed the class action settlement format!) of paying rights holders from a fixed pool (which might vary month to month but was fixed for each month). The so-called "new model" has had its fans and its detractors but has so far been a choice for rights holders to make.
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Decline In Children's Reading

News Summary: UK Study Shows Decline in Children’s Reading for Pleasure; Green Shoots among Teens

Are children reading less for pleasure than they used to? It feels like one of those "death of the novel" questions, the kind it's almost compulsory to ask at regular intervals if you are even semiserious about books. But in this instance, as I am fairly sure has been the case several times in the past when I've reported on the same annual report, the occasion for the question is a new survey of reading habits.
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Beehiiv Adds Webinars

News Summary: Beehiiv Adds Webinars and Metered Paywalls; Anthropic Settlement Reaches 91% Claim Rate

Beehiiv has been in the news again this past week. I want to report on the latest from the newsletter platform if for no other reason than an irresistible desire to say they have been busy little bees. A facility offering webinar capability will be of interest to some. But more interesting might be the so-called "metered paywall" capability. That's something many will be familiar with as readers, where you get a certain amount of content for free (say, three articles) before you have to pay to unlock more.
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