On this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, Dan Holloway opens with news that early bird tickets are now available for the Indie Author Lab, taking place alongside London Book Fair in March. He then looks at TikTok’s launch of short-form serial video drama as a new outlet for episodic storytelling, before turning to fresh legal developments as major publishers move to intervene in the ongoing lawsuit against Google’s Gemini AI, signaling a push toward collective licensing talks.
Listen to the Podcast: Indie Author Lab Tickets Go on Sale
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About the Host
Dan Holloway is a novelist, poet, and spoken word artist. He is the MC of the performance arts show The New Libertines, He competed at the National Poetry Slam final at the Royal Albert Hall. His latest collection, The Transparency of Sutures, is available on Kindle.
Read the Transcript
Dan Holloway: Hello and welcome to another Self-Publishing News podcast. Some exciting news from ALLi to kick us off today: early bird tickets are now on sale for the Indie Author Lab, which is going to be held on March 11th. Early bird discounts are available until January 31st, so make sure you check that out if you're going to be anywhere near London Book Fair.
The event coincides with London Book Fair and will be held at Kensington Town Hall in London on March 11th. It's an all-day event from 9:30 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon, followed by drinks sponsored by Amazon. There will be talks, workshops, Q&A, mentoring, review exercises, and networking. Those attending will be asked before they arrive to share their goals for the year — what they're aiming to do in self-publishing and what barriers they expect to encounter — and the day will be a chance to work through those goals and barriers together with a host of experts including Melissa Addey, Sacha Black, Shelly Hanu, Karen Riss, Thad McElroy, Joanna Penn, Debbie Young, and of course Orna Ross.
You'll get lunch and a copy of Creative Self-Publishing, which is ALLi's guide to independent publishing, plus a workbook to use throughout the day. Hugely recommended for anyone coming to London for London Book Fair or who's in London anyway. Do check out the early bird discounts before the end of January.
TikTok's Micro-Dramas and the Art of Serial Storytelling
What else do we have? Some interesting news from TikTok. They're introducing what they're calling Pine Drama — an app designed for short-form serial videos. One-minute micro-dramas: serial one-minute videos that tap into the long-standing appetite for ultra-short serialized stories.
This is not a new idea by any means. I remember learning about cell phone novels perhaps 20 years ago — and even then they weren't new. Those were novels written in as many characters as you could fit into a text message in the early days of mobile phones, back when you were sending things over WAP and had around 180 characters. Chapters that gripped you at the start and ended on a cliffhanger. TikTok is tapping into exactly that tradition.
For those interested in storytelling and honing the craft of sharp, rapid storytelling — chapters that start on a gripping note and end on a cliffhanger — this is a really good way to develop your craft and find an audience at the same time. It's the video equivalent of platforms like Radish and Wattpad, which are hugely popular for serial stories in small chunks. An exciting development in the world of serial storytelling.
The Google Gemini Lawsuit and a Growing Class of Rights Holders
We also have AI news this week — another significant lawsuit development. This one is not around the Anthropic case but around a separate lawsuit taken out in 2023 by a group of writers and illustrators against Google's Gemini, currently in the Northern California judiciary. It alleges, as the Anthropic case did, the use of pirate libraries and shadow libraries, and also pursues copyright infringement claims in cases where retail copies were purchased.
The news is that two large publishing groups — Cengage and Hachette — have issued a motion to intervene, asking to be considered part of a class action. This has been welcomed by the Association of American Publishers. Maria Pallante issued a statement alongside the AAP saying that publishers and writers working together is a good thing, and that this will help create a landscape in which licensing of content can be discussed properly. The line she ends with is worth noting. She says it is understandable that technology companies may want or need creative works to build their AI systems, but this realization should point to a licensing conversation, not a rationalization — that we should move past the early free-for-all days of AI development and get back to the symbiotic partnerships that have always been a hallmark of copyright law.
The idea of publishers and other rights holders forming a class together is something that has emerged through the Anthropic case, though it has not been straightforward — publishers and creatives have had to work through their differences on questions like how any settlement would be split among rights holders. The Anthropic case settled on a 50/50 split for most categories, though for textbooks it's been more complex, and Sage was recently rapped on the knuckles for claiming authors should not seek more in settlement than their royalty rate.
As indie authors, we have a somewhat different landscape when it comes to settlements, because we are our own publishers — there's no split to negotiate. We would nonetheless clearly benefit from the presence of large organizations in the negotiation process on behalf of rights holders, even though that brings its own potential conflicts of interest between publishers and individual creators. Which brings us back to a story from a couple of weeks ago: the launch of the Copyright Coalition, a group of rights holders that has come together specifically to address that question — how individual rights holders can argue collectively and forcefully without any conflicts of interest with publishers' groups.
Fascinating developments in the AI legal landscape, which will inevitably shape how future settlements are structured and in turn will have a significant knock-on effect on the potential for licensing arrangements going forward. Whatever those developments are, I will bring them to you as fully as I can and point you to the sources so you can check them out directly. Very much look forward to speaking to you again at the same time next week. Thank you as always.
