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Speakies Shortlist Features Indie Author

News Summary: Speakies Shortlist Features Indie Author; Spotify Expands Partner Program to 35 New Markets

The Speakies are the newer UK-based relative (technically the British Audio Awards) of the US' Audies Awards, celebrating the best of the year's audiobooks. Like the Audies, the Speakies are open to indie titles, which is why I make sure to spend some time scouring the shortlists and winners when they appear. And this past week the shortlist came out.
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Substack Strengthens Ties With Publishing Industry

News Summary: Substack Strengthens Ties with Publishing Industry; Pitches Platform to Fiction and Nonfiction Authors

Like many writers I have an email newsletter (though unlike many of my more disciplined colleagues I am not fastidious about posting to it regularly). It is not the platform I use, but the highest-profile longform email newsletter platform is Substack. It is also the one that tries hardest to engage with the writing and publishing community in an endeavor to make the case that it is both a valuable tool for engaging with readers and a (financially) valuable medium for writing in and of itself.
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Publishers Dispute Anthropic Payouts

News Summary: Publishers Dispute Anthropic Payouts; FutureBook Joins London Book Fair in 2027

Before anything else, a point of clarification after reading Jane Friedman's incredibly in-depth roundup of all things Anthropic. The wrangling over lawyers' fees, she has said, should not delay the onset of payments to rights holders. The first of those payments, in instances where there is clarity over who the rights holders are, should start trickling through in November.
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Spotify Opens AI Audiobook Creation Tools

News Summary: Spotify Opens AI Audiobook Creation Tools to All US Indie Authors; Webtoon Launches AI Translation

The big news of the week is Spotify's announcement that it is opening up its AI narration tools for audiobooks to all indie authors in the US. Audiobook Creation Tools was the ElevenLabs collaboration with Spotify that had been in beta. It allows authors to turn their books into audiobooks within their Spotify for Authors account using a selection of ElevenLabs' AI-generated narration voices.
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Self-Publishing Partnership Collapse

News Summary: Self-Publishing Partnership Collapse Affects Around 100 Authors

We end with an update on a story I reported on a week or so back, the collapse of the Self-Publishing Partnership (SPP). You will recall that authors had received emails seemingly out of the blue notifying them that the company would cease trading. This left authors with unpaid royalties and print books left in the system, with Gardners trying to find ways to help authors whose books they still had in their distribution network. Much of the groundwork in following things up was done by The Bookseller, and they have just issued an update (update to the update: there’s a second update!).
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Bonnier Buys Nextory

News Summary: Bonnier Buys Nextory, CDs Rebound, and a Goodreads Scam Targets Authors

We start with some big news in the audiobook sphere. That news comes from the world of Nordic audiobook companies, where Sweden’s Bonnier, owner of the BookBeat platform, has fully bought audiobook platform Nextory. That this was positioned in the Publishing Perspectives report on the story as a challenge to Storytel is a suitable reminder of just how dominant companies in that part of the world are in the audiobook market.
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Library E-Book Lending Hurts Book Sales

News Summary: New Study Says Library E-Book Lending Hurts Book Sales

The tale of libraries, e-books, and publishers is less a news story and more an album-length epic of prog rock. The TL;DR so far is: libraries say they are being asked to pay too much for e-books; publishers say they have to charge this much because libraries take away from retail sales; meanwhile, indies can set their own prices when they distribute to OverDrive and make our books a very attractive proposition.
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Google Play Books Launches Expert Intelligence

News Summary: Google Play Books Launches Expert Intelligence Ebook Function

Google Play Books is the latest ebook store to jump on the bandwagon of adding AI features that enable readers to interact with the books they are reading. Amazon has already introduced, you will remember, a Story So Far feature that acts as a recap for readers who want to be brought up to speed when they dive back into a book. That feature also allows you to ask about characters and plot arcs within the book you are reading.
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Delay Anthropic Payout

News Summary: Appeal Over Legal Fees Could Delay Anthropic Payout

We start the week with a bit of topping, tailing, and appendixing of some stories we’ve been following for a little while. First and most significantly comes news from the Anthropic case that could have a direct impact, with thanks to Jane Friedman for pointing to the story. It seems as though there might be an appeal in this case. But it’s not coming from where you might expect: the tech giant liable to pay out the $1.5 billion settlement in the class action.
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News Summary: Survey Suggests Many Publishers Still Fail to Register Copyright

A very interesting postscript to the Anthropic case comes courtesy of a survey carried out by the Authors Guild. You will recall that one of the key defining factors of the eligible class in the class action was that copyright was registered in a timely fashion with the US Copyright Office. We know this meant a lot of otherwise eligible indie authors were denied compensation as a result of this.
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