Meta ceo Mark Zuckerberg himself knew that the books used to train the company’s AI tool were pirated, according to newly-public documents in one of the California class-action lawsuits against the tech company. Attorneys for a group of author plaintiffs (including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, Andrew Sean Greer, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Jacqueline Woodson) assert that Zuckerberg approved the use of a dataset from shadow library LibGen to train their Llama LLM, despite concerns from other employees about it provenance. “Meta has treated the so-called ‘public availability’ of shadow datasets as a get out of jail free card, notwithstanding that internal […]
Archives for January 2025
People 1/10
Tokyopop Partners With Mattel On Manga
Anime and manga brand Tokyopop has partnered with Mattel to develop manga-style graphic novels for children ages 8-12 based on Mattel’s Hot Wheels and Barbie brands. First titles, including “a western-style manga graphic novel series inspired by Hot Wheels and new stories featuring characters from Barbie,” will launch in 2026. Marc Visnick, Tokyopop coo and publisher, says in a release, “Hot Wheels and Barbie are two of the world’s most adored toy and entertainment brands and we are excited to partner with Mattel to develop and publish new original manga-style graphic novels. Tokyopop’s catalog is renowned for bestselling titles featuring notable […]
Ulysses Press and Castle Point Execs Launch Bluestone Books
CEO of Ulysses Press and Perfect Bound Keith Riegert and Holly Schmidt and Bruce Lubin, co-founders of Castle Point Books and packager and publisher Spot Gloss Media, have joined to launch publishing company Bluestone Books. Bluestone aims to publish 25-20 books a year in popular culture, practical non-fiction, and “concept-driven children’s titles,” with the first list of nine books publishing in summer 2025. According to a release, “Spot Gloss Media’s in-house team of writers, editors, and art directors will oversee all creative development for Bluestone Books, while Riegert brings the distribution relationship with Simon & Schuster, publicity and marketing expertise, […]
Presenting Searchable Salary Transparency
We have launched the first of our new tools for the year at Publishers Marketplace. Salary Search lets you check posted salary information over time for any job position by searching through many thousands of listings from Publishers Lunch Job Board archive. Since salary transparency laws in major states were implemented over the past couple of years, the richest data is also the most recent data, though the feature will match historical listings for whenever a salary was posted in a PL job listing. Every column is sortable, so you can easily sort by job posting date, salary level, title, […]