News Archives

News Summary: Radish to Shut Down by End of 2025 After Nearly a Decade of Serialized Fiction

Before I started this post, I thought I would look back at the things I’ve said about Radish over the years. It turns out that although I’ve covered the serial fiction reading platform quite a few times, most of those were in 2021 and relate to the platform’s acquisition by Korean entertainment giant Kakao for north of $400 million. Aside from that, I’ve tended to use them as one of a list of similar platforms all doing similar things—bringing readers small but regular chunks of serialized fiction.

News Summary: Translators Push Back Against Globescribe AI; Bookshop.org Takes Aim at Prime Day

As this goes to press, Amazon Prime “Day” is coming to an end. But I will leave that hanging as an exercise in foreshadowing. This week has seen widespread anger in the translator community over the launch of Globescribe, a platform that offers AI-generated translation services to publishers and indie authors.

News Summary: Sarah J. Maas Signs Licensing Deal with IMG to Expand ACOTAR Universe Beyond Books

Thanks, as they so often do, go to Mark Williams for alerting me to a story I had missed about Sarah J. Maas. Unusually so, because I have spent a considerable part of this year writing about romantasy, a genre that Maas has arguably done more than any other author to propel to the status of reading phenomenon it currently holds.

News Summary: Cloudflare Launches Pay Per Crawl for AI Scraping; Amazon Hits One Million Robots

You’ve heard, of course, of pay-per-view. And we are used to streaming revenue on a pay-per basis from the likes of Audible and Spotify. This week has seen the launch (admittedly at the moment in beta) of possibly the most transformative source of pay-per revenue of all. Cloudflare is now offering what it calls Pay Per Crawl, which will enable people to charge AI companies for scraping content from their sites.

News Summary: Anthropic Wins Fair Use Ruling on AI Training, but Faces Billions over Pirated Library

The big news this week is that there has been a ruling in one of the major AI copyright cases, and the tech industry at this stage seems to have the most to cheer. But while there are implications for other claims, this is not a once-and-done case by any means.

News Summary: EU Accessibility Act Takes Effect, Raising the Bar for Digital Publishing Standards

I decided I should probably write this entry while listening, with bleary-eyed nostalgia, to New Order. Because this story quite simply evokes the line, “I used to think that the day would never come.” I have been writing about the European Union’s Accessibility Act for years now. Such is the way with European legislation—its journey into law has more hidden levels than Super Mario Brothers.

News Summary: Booktrovert Launches, New Poetry Prize Announced, and Marginalia Returns via TikTok

A suitable Saturday round-up brings us new opportunities and the oldest of literary trends. First up, news of a new platform that seeks to offer something distinctive in what I’d call the “curated discovery” space. It feels like a crowded space already, but in practical terms it is dominated by BookBub. Its name is Booktrovert, and it is brought to the world by the NetGalley team.

TikTok’s 8th Note Press Faces Shutdown Amid Author Complaints: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

My previous story reported on the opening of a new romance-only bookstore (one hopes the wedding venue license will be coming soon for literary lovers’ very own HEA!). Needless to say, the owner of the store in question cited TikTok as one of the driving factors in the decision to open the store. This is a theme. The resurgence of bookstores and the influence of BookTok go hand in hand.

Romance Drives Fiction Boom and Audiobooks Surge: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

'Tis the season to celebrate audiobook growth, it seems. So what better way to mark the solstice—when the city is full of folk dancers and the countryside is full of all manner of people doing all manner of things to mark the longest (or shortest, depending upon your hemisphere) day—than to report on yet another set of industry figures that points to the health of the audio market?

TikTok Ban Deadline Extended Again; UK Conference Tackles AI and Piracy: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

I had approached filing the end-of-week news with the kind of trepidation that seems to come around on a regular cycle—a cycle that lasts as long as the latest TikTok ban deadline. But sure enough, as I sat down to write, the news came through that will be music to my editor’s ears. No last-minute rush (on this, at least). Sure enough, the deadline for the sale of TikTok’s operations in the United States has been extended by another ninety days and will not come into force this week. The third such extension this year, apparently, this time it really will lead to the closing of a deal to see TikTok in the U.S. into new, non-Chinese ownership. I fully anticipate reporting the same come September.

Spotify Reports Audiobook Growth; AI Search Summaries Cut Publisher Traffic: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

Spotify is doing well and helping publishers in the process—or so says the latest release from, er, Spotify. Despite the obvious possible messiah complex going on, there are some really interesting and encouraging figures in the report. The catalog of English-language audiobooks now exceeds 400,000, which shows the scale of the operation.

New UK-Based Speakies Awards Offer Audiobook Alternative to the Audies: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

As we celebrate the return of double-digit growth to audiobooks, it might seem strange that there is still really only one big audiobook award. The Audies, run by the Audio Publishers Association, is a huge affair with nearly thirty categories. And of course, it’s open to indie authors. Well, now there’s another contender: the Speakies (surely to become known as the Speakeasies—and if there’s not a Bugsy Malone feel to the first staging, I will be hugely disappointed).