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Alliance Of Independent Authors | Self-Publishing News | April 29, 2025 | With Dan Holloway

Independent Bookstore Day Celebrates Growing Support for Indies; Linktree Expands Creator Tools: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

It has now passed, but as I write, it is Independent Bookstore Day. This is run annually (I believe on the last Saturday in April) by the American Booksellers Association. Sixteen hundred stores are taking part across America, and the day is a celebration of the important part they play both in the literary and the wider community.
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Alliance Of Independent Authors | Self-Publishing News | April 26, 2025 | With Dan Holloway

Oscars Open to AI-Generated Films and Literary Events Make a Comeback: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

It was inevitable that AI would poke its nose in before the week drew to a close, and here we are (though we also have a delightfully analog story as a counterbalance). You will recall that the Grammys recently announced they would permit music that AI had played a part in creating to be eligible for their awards. This week, the Oscars followed suit, announcing that AI-generated films will be eligible for top honors.
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Alliance Of Independent Authors | Self-Publishing News | April 24, 2025 | With Dan Holloway

Patreon Livestreaming and Book Box Publishers Highlight Creator-Led Trends: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

An increasing number of my favorite online creatives are moving more of their content behind a paywall, and new tools like Patreon livestreaming are helping them do it. This applies to YouTube channels, and it also applies to writers and bloggers. Creators are increasingly discovering that the OG of internet art, the 1,000 true fans model, is still a viable way to avoid the twin perils of the algorithm and changing payment models that come with relying on ad revenue, general fee pools, and other forms of reliance on wider platforms.
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Amazon’s TikTok Bid

Amazon’s TikTok Bid Sparks Booksellers’ Opposition; Publishers File Brief Against Meta: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

We end the week with a round-up that begins with a story I seem to have missed when it first broke at the start of April. It’s an interesting and highly relevant twist in the TikTok ownership saga. You will recall that we are currently in a ninety-day extension to the time at which the TikTok ban is scheduled to come into force. The condition for avoiding the ban is that TikTok in the US is sold to a company not based in China and uses a different algorithm from the one the ByteDance-owned company currently operates everywhere it is available.
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Mediascout

Ingram Mediascout Offers Film Rights Exposure for Indie Authors: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

In my day job in higher education, I am, like many others, winding down for the holiday season. But in the book world, we seem to have stumbled into a particularly busy time for news. So expect more than one story from each column this week. I begin with particularly exciting news for indie authors looking to extract the maximum return from all of the rights they own in their work. Ingram has just gone live with its Mediascout program.
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Canva Unveils AI Tools

Canva Unveils AI Tools, Including Image Generation; Law Professors Challenge Meta’s Copyright Use: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

This week’s AI news focuses on two issues of great interest to indie authors. I will start with Canva. In part because I haven’t talked about them for a while. And partly because this news picks up from the last time I did talk about them. Which was last year, when they made a lot of people unhappy by increasing the price of its Pro offering from a flat $120 per year for a team license to $10 a month per team member.
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Books Exempt From Latest US Tariffs

Books Exempt from Latest US Tariffs, but Printing Materials May Be Hit: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

You will probably have noticed an absence of reporting on what has been an almost constant in the regular news media: the impact of the various new international trade tariffs. That is because there has been considerable lack of clarity on the impact this would have on the book business and our particular corner of it. This week we learned a lot more. Tl;dr: books are exempt from the latest round of tariffs imposed on trade imports into the US.
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AI Copyright Lawsuits

AI Copyright Lawsuits Consolidated as Authors Protest Meta’s Use of Shadow Library: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

For some time, there have been several AI copyright lawsuits brought by rights holders against tech firms, each focusing on how they trained their generative models and whether they breached copyright in doing so. Now, twelve of those cases have been consolidated, including the highest profile of all—the one brought by (inter alia) Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates—during which Meta’s now-infamous internal comms about LibGen were released.
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Kindle Recaps

AI-Powered Kindle Recaps Launched for Series Readers; TikTok Ban Delayed: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

Users of Amazon’s Kindle (in the US for now, but surely to be widened) now have access to a new “recaps” feature. Kindle Recaps is designed for people who like book series. As the title suggests, it allows readers to refresh their memories about what happened earlier in the series while they are reading the latest installment.
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Alliance Of Independent Authors | Self-Publishing News | April 5, 2025 | With Dan Holloway

NaNoWriMo Is Closing Down After Two Decades: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

“So long and thanks for all the fish” is one of the most famous quotations from my childhood. It is, of course, the title of the fourth book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series—and the last line spoken by the dolphins as they exit Earth before its destruction. Whatever Adams’s intention, it is a phrase I have always associated with wistful goodbyes.
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W H Smith

W H Smith Sale Signals Shift in Book Retailing: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

Occasionally, I come across a story that may have limited reach but strikes a very personal chord. I hope that, like the best chefs, if I season my reporting sparingly enough with them, I get to indulge without too much offense. This is one of those stories. One of the UK’s most famous and longstanding retailers, W H Smith, has been sold. The simple blue-and-white signs bearing its name will no longer frequent the high street.
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