Target stores open at 6 AM on Friday morning, expecting to see lines to customers waiting in particular for copies of TAYLOR SWIFT: The Eras Tour Book. There is a maximum limit of four copies per person. The WSJ reports that the chain will have two million copies available (“according to a person familiar with the matter”). Target has just under 2,000 stores in the US; there’s no telling how the inventory is allocated, but that would provide for an average of 1,000 copies per store. Books will be available online the following day if inventory is still available. A […]
Oops
On Friday we forgot to include the link for the Atlantic’s article, “The Most Coveted Screenshot In the World,” in case you did not find it on your own.
Atlantic Official
Jordan Michelman writes in the Atlantic about “the most coveted screenshot in the literary world,” honoring writers’ joy in sharing their “Publishers Marketplace Official” book deal screenshots. “It’s become one of the most important rites of passage in the book-publication process—more meaningful to some writers than a book party or book-cover reveal. For many authors, in fact, no book deal is complete until they’ve posted it. It is the Publishers Marketplace book-deal social-media post.” Lately, we have been admiring all the authors moving to BlueSky and populating it anew with their deals. Creators continue to impress us with their innovative […]
Sales of This Year’s NBA Fiction Nominees Surpass Previous Winners
One thing is clear in advance of tonight’s National Book Awards ceremony: The list of fiction nominees is the most commercial crop of titles in contention for many years. Kaveh Akbar’s MARTYR! is among the top-selling debuts of the year, with sales of approximately 46,000 hardcovers so far as measured by Circana Bookscan. That puts it well head of the hardcover sales of the last three NBA fiction winners (BLACKOUTS; THE RABBIT HUTCH; and HELL OF A BOOK). Miranda July’s breakout ALL FOURS was one of the summer’s most talked about books, and has sold just over 99,000 hardcovers. And […]
Microsoft Is HarperCollins’ AI Licensee
Bloomberg’s Hannah Miller and Dina Bass reported that Microsoft is the large tech company that has a licensing deal with HarperCollins for nonfiction books to train AI models, “according to a person familiar with the matter.” That person indicates, “Microsoft wants the HarperCollins books for a model that it hasn’t yet announced…. The company isn’t planning to use the content to generate new books without human authors, the person said.” Harper Collins had said previously in a statement that their licensing deal authorized “limited use of select nonfiction backlist titles for training AI models to improve model quality and performance.”
Authors Guild CEO Says Harper “Struck A Good Deal” for AI Licensing
Authors Guild ceo Mary Rasenberger and her staff have been actively engaged in representing authors’ interests in the battle to take back control of copyrighted work in an AI world, and monetize those rights if they choose. Speaking to PL about Harper’s new deal to license a body of backlist nonfiction works to a large AI company for authors who elect to consent, and with certain contractual guardrails in place, Rasenberger told us: “We really appreciate that Harper has taken the initiative and thought through how to protect works and keep AI from taking away from any existing value of […]