Posted on August 22, 2023 at 9:00 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
There's a lot happening in the business and technology corners of the writing world.
The publishing experts we follow have quite a few updates and pieces of advice that we thought were worth sharing.
Artificial intelligence
The New York Times is considering legal action against OpenAI (the creator of ChatGPT), according to NPR's sources; at issue are the intellectual property rights associated with the newspaper's reporting.
Jane Friedman also has concerns about AI, in particular, that the rise of AI-generated garbage books could result in indie authors' work being wrongly flagged as fakes; that said, The Passive Voice blog has some reservations over her proposed solution.
As for scams — Anne R. Allen has a reminder that while Friedman's work was targeted by AI-related fraudsters, there are plenty of lower-tech ne'er-do-wells out there that authors should watch out for.
BookTok
Publishers Weekly notes that while BookTok's sales boost seems to be slowing down, the platform remains important for authors to spread the word about their works.
But that said, Mark Williams of The New Publishing Standard has more skepticism about what BookTok actually did (and about print sales, in general).
ADVICE
Joanna Penn interviewed Joe Solari about how authors can build a successful business for the long term.
Penny Sansevieri and Amy Cornell focused an episode of their podcast on what authors need to know about paid influencer marketing.
Categories: Behind the scenes