News Archives

Self-Publishing News: OpenAI Unveils New Features for ChatGPT-4 and UK Publishers Take on Government Over AI

This week’s big AI news is OpenAI’s demonstration of new features for its ChatGPT-4 platform, which the company emphasized does not yet amount to ChatGPT-5. The announcement of GPT-4o, available to all users, including free users, and as a desktop app, was particularly notable.

Self-Publishing News: Booksellers Pile on Amazon, Everyone Piles on Apple

It won’t have escaped your notice that Amazon is currently, as it regularly is, subject to an antitrust complaint from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The complaint, as it stands, alleges that Amazon uses its giant market share to squeeze out competition, damaging the business ecosystem and preventing rivals from competing with it through price manipulation. There is also an interesting allegation that its own price-cutting damages sellers by reducing their margins to wafer thin.

Self-Publishing News: UK Online Safety Act’s Impact on Content and ByteDance’s Challenge to US Legislation

So far this month, we have seen developments in two stories I’ve covered before that sit together under the heading, “Laying Down the Law for Tech Platforms.” I’ll start close to home here in the UK with the latest in the ongoing saga of the Online Safety Act. This is the UK’s legislation that seeks to protect vulnerable people, especially children, while they are online, by stopping them from encountering material that is “legal but harmful.” The recently implemented act required technology firms to take steps to ensure children were better protected online than adults.

Self-Publishing News: Indie Author Marks New Book with a No-AI Guarantee

OK, bear with me. This no-AI guarantee story is the second AI story for the week. I hope I will round off with something completely different. But because of the unpredictable nature of the news, I cannot promise. Which is, of course, a ham-handed segue into the story.

Self-Publishing News: OpenAI Paper Hints at How it Plans to Compensate Creators

Remember last week when I virtually popped a champagne cork at having gone a whole seven days without an AI story? Well, er, the reverie is over. But I hope the absence has left you wanting because this is a story you really need to read. Find out more about the OpenAI paper.

Self-Publishing News: Readers of All Ages Turn to YA Fiction for Solace

As so often happens, this week’s weekend roundup has seen a rather nice theme emerge. That theme is something of interest to indies, who write a lot in this area. That theme is YA literature.

Self-Publishing News: Legal Changes Impacting Authors, from Noncompete Agreements to Payment Regulations

This feels like a week of legal and related stories. The big news, which I reported on earlier, is, of course, the move closer to a TikTok ban in the United States. But a few other stories caught my attention. First up is the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voting to ban noncompete agreements.

Self-Publishing News: US Passes Law That Might Ban TikTok

The United States’ longstanding quest to ban TikTok took a significant step forward in the past week. Headlines of the app’s imminent disappearance remain, however, somewhat premature.

Self-publishing News: IBPA Maps out Current Author Publishing Paths and Booksellers Seek New Models

The IBPA has launched its outline of eight publishing models, an interesting companion piece to Jane Friedman’s different publishing models guide.

April 27, 2024
Dan Holloway
News
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Self-Publishing News: Meta Considered Buying Simon & Schuster to Train AI

The New York Times received leaks from a former employee at Facebook’s parent Meta that show the company were spending a lot of time at the start of 2023 discussing the possibility of buying Simon & Schuster. The purpose of the acquiring Simon & Schuster would have been to acquire the rights to the catalogue so as to use it for AI training.

April 25, 2024
Dan Holloway
News
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Self-Publishing News: Manga Publishers Win Record Compensation in Piracy Ruling

Courts in Tokyo ruled that piracy site Manga-Mura should pay 1.7bn yen (US$10m) to three manga publishers in Japan for lost revenue.

April 23, 2024
Dan Holloway
News
1 Comment

Self-Publishing News: ChatGPT Update and Screenwriters Guilds Unite to Issue Ethical AI Principles

The latest version of ChatGPT will, according to OpenAI, be less roundabout, more direct, and more conversational in its answers. And, two major bodies representing script writers have issued a joint statement outlining five principles for an ethical framework for the use of AI in script writing.