After a headline-making excerpt ran in Vanity Fair on October 22, One Signal accelerated the publication of Matthew Cole’s PRINCES AND THIEVES: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East to publish on October 25. The book was originally scheduled for October 27. “Given the increase in interest in Princes and Thieves, Simon & Schuster decided to move up the on-sale date by two days, and the book is now available for purchase through most retail channels,” a Simon & Schuster spokesperson stated. The excerpt alleges that, while he was a senior White House official […]
First Anthropic Payments Now Due the Week of November 23
Further to our prior reporting with clarifications on the Anthropic settlement process, the parties noticed in a filing from last Friday that the “Settlement Administrator will send notices of agreed allocations on or before November 13, 2026, and the initial distribution of the Settlement payments during the week of November 23, 2026.” The Court also approved the posting of basic communication updates to the settlement website, including indicating that: “The Allocation Portal does not update immediately, so don’t be alarmed if you don’t see your changes right away. Changes are reviewed manually before they appear on the portal. When you […]
People 10/26
Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of the Year
Pangram’s “Similarity Checker” Compares Text, But its Sourcing Raises Questions
In September, a writer used a little-discussed feature of Pangram’s software, the plagiarism checker. In analyzing the unpublished manuscript, Pangram flagged two lines that were close to other writing—both common phrases, and not exact matches as a full sentence. One linked to a post in an online forum. The other linked to the full, pirated manuscript of a published book, hosted on Notability (which is supposed to be a private note-taking and annotation app, rather than a viewable or searchable content repository). Pangram’s plagiarism checker, which was added over a year ago in August 2025, “compares your text against billions […]
Kindle Unlimited Becomes Kindle+, Adds Self-Published Audiobooks
The Kindle Unlimited subscription service is rebranding to Kindle+, which will include self-published Kindle Direct Publishing audiobooks, Amazon announced. The company is encouraging Kindle Unlimited authors to create audiobooks to include in the service. “We’ve seen great results for authors with eBooks in KDP Select, and we’re excited to bring this same opportunity to authors for audiobooks,” the company states. “By adding audiobooks to the Kindle+ subscription, our goal is to grow the program by attracting new subscribers with this new format and provide an expanded selection that keeps readers reading. Audiobooks that have already been created with AI voices […]