Events Calendar

AI Witch Hunt

News Summary: US Book Show Warns against AI Witch Hunt as Publishers Face Detection Dilemma

The start of this month saw the second staging of the much-vaunted US Book Show. There is already some great coverage out there, notably from Publishers Weekly, who hosted the show, and from Publishing Perspectives. I've also enjoyed reading Jane Friedman, who has been involved in the hosting. But I will try to pull out the highlights. Of course, AI was on the agenda. And the headlines from the show have been grabbed by the centerpiece panel featuring David Shelley, CEO of Hachette, which was the company at the heart of the Shy Girl storm.
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Alliance Of Independent Authors | Self-Publishing News | August 12, 2025 | With Dan Holloway

News Summary: Boundless Books Closes, Leaving Authors Owed Royalties; New Venture Offers Help

Over the past few weeks, I’ve reported a couple of times on the troubles at what was Unbound and has since become Boundless Books. Most recently, the founder of Unbound, John Mitchison, left the new company that had been set up under the CEO-ship of Archna Sharma to attempt to rescue what had once seemed like a groundbreaking initiative that mixed book industry know-how with a Kickstarter-type business model for authors.
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Alliance Of Independent Authors | Self-Publishing News | August 5, 2025 | With Dan Holloway

News Summary: Online Safety Act and EU AI Laws Raise Concerns for Writers and Publishers

The Online Safety Act is a piece of U.K. legislation, but as I have been reporting for some years, it affects all of us. And that’s because, as is the way with national legislation, it doesn’t just impact the citizens of a country—its reach extends to everyone who wants to deal with that country. And that includes those who want to sell into its market, which is a lot of us who write in, or translate into, English.
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Alliance Of Independent Authors | Self-Publishing News June 14, 2025 | With Dan Holloway

Unbound Struggles Continue, UK Rejects AI Transparency, and PWC Tracks Job Shifts: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

The ongoing Unbound struggles continue to unfold as more troubling news emerges about the transition from Unbound to Boundless Books. Having made it AI-free through the first half of the week, we end with a round-up of a few stories from the area. First (with a tangential AI link I hadn’t previously spotted), and with thanks to all-round legend Sam Missingham for this highly thoughtful thread on Bluesky, is the latest development in the Unbound/Boundless saga.
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Pirated Books

Meta Considered Using Pirated Books for AI Training, Kindle Policy Change Sparks Debate: Self-Publishing with ALLi Featuring Dan Holloway

On this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, Dan Holloway reports on Meta’s internal discussions about AI training, revealing that the company considered using pirated books to train its language models. Court documents show Meta abandoned licensing talks with publishers after realizing they didn’t have the rights to AI training data. Meanwhile, Kindle’s recent policy change regarding USB book transfers continues to stir debate, and World of Books expands into the US resale market.
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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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The Big Indie Author Data Drop Announcement

For indie authors, "data" often has negative connotations. We're words people, not numbers. Except, numbers are a core part of business, and we should all be better with data because it helps us grow, and increase income and performance. But what happens when the industry—our industry—doesn't provide us with the data that we need? That's where the Big Indie Data Drop comes in and exactly what the Alliance of Independent Authors is announcing today.
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Surveying Self-Publishing: Facts About Indie Author Income In 2022: Images Of Blue Graphs

Surveying Self-Publishing: Facts about Indie Author Income in 2022

Publishing is a fast-paced and ever-changing industry and so we at the Alliance of Independent Authors thought it might be useful to many writing-based organizations to offer both a brief update on the importance of self-publishing today and on how organizations can ensure they are including high quality indie authors in their work, for mutual benefit. This is facts and figures about indie author income in 2022.
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