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AI Summit In Paris

AI Summit in Paris Ends Without UK and US Support; Copyright Concerns Left Unresolved: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

Remember I promised to have only one AI-related story this week. I hope you also remember I said it would be a stretch. And that’s because the AI Summit in Paris has now taken place. If you recall, a group of thirty-eight creative industry bodies, including the International Publishers Association, had come together to call for regulation around transparency and compensation in relation to copyright.
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Kindle Sales

Amazon Sees Record Kindle Sales; AI Art Auction Sparks Controversy; UK Appoints Ex-Amazon Exec as Antitrust Chief: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

E-books are still doing very well, and Kindle sales have seen a surprising resurgence. That was one of the themes that emerged last year. You will remember Mark Williams gave us one of his timely reminders of how woefully short the official figures fall and the increase to KDP Select payments, which now top $600 million a year and then some. But how are people reading those e-books?
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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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