I have already reported on The Novelry’s new $100,000 prize, The Next Big Story. But as the prize closes this month (on July 31) and as Publishers Weekly thinks it worthy of a reminder, I thought it worth doing likewise. After all, $100,000 is not to be sniffed at. And the prize, which has a $15 entry fee, has some other ticks in its favor.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
One of those is that all the entries will be read and assessed by what The Novelry claims are its in-house readers before the shortlist heads to the celebrity judges—thus bypassing any popular vote or algorithmic assessment.
It also looks like it is on the lookout for books people who love reading will love to read, rather than ones with their sights set on an audience of critics. Entries should consist of the first 1,500 words of a novel.
Google’s AI Summaries May Shrink Site Traffic
Meanwhile, in the world of AI, traffic to websites looks set to take a further hit from Google. This comes from Google Discover, its Android and iOS news feed. Rather than linking to individual stories from individual sources, it will deliver AI-generated summaries that are an amalgamation from different places. It will carry a single list of the platforms cited, rather than a story-by-story list.
Age Verification and the New Online Safety Act
The other big news from the tech world is that the UK’s new Online Safety Act (OSA) is starting to have an impact on who accesses web content and how in the UK. The OSA, as I have been reporting for a few years now, aims to prevent children from being exposed to content that is “legal but harmful.”
Unsurprisingly, it has been controversial in many circles—because of concerns about who gets to decide what that content is, and primarily because sites that contain such content are being required to roll out age verification to allow people to view it.
And that’s where it affects us as writers. Because if a government decides our material is unsuitable for children, in theory the platform where it is hosted will be required to verify reader age.
And many people are nervous about that, because it will surely be a question of what happens when—not if—people’s personal ID documents get leaked or hacked.
This week, I came across the first news of a large site—no less than Reddit—putting content behind such a verification wall.
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