As we noted recently, coalitions of authors took the lead in 2023 in trying to hold the leaders in generative AI accountable for stealing vast amounts of copyrighted materials to train their Large Language Models. Now at year’s end, authors gained a powerful ally in court as the New York Times Company filed its own copyright infringement lawsuit in Federal Court in New York’s Southern District against OpenAI and Microsoft. The NYT says comes after lengthy negotiations: “For months, The Times has attempted to reach a negotiated agreement with Defendants, in accordance with its history of working productively with large […]
Skyhorse to Acquire Regnery
Skyhorse announced a deal to acquire conservative publisher Regnery from Salem Media Group, which amusingly they chose to release through the New York Times. (But it worked, and got the paper to cover an otherwise small acquisition.) Regnery is projecting sales of just $10 million for 2023, and will operate as an imprint of Skyhorse. They bring a backlist of over 1,500 titles. Skyhorse president and publisher Tony Lyons tells the NYT candidly that his books “are provocative and dangerous and disturbing,” which he sees as an argument why stores should carry them, to “encourage dialogue and debate.” The transaction […]
Holiday Sales Come Down to Final Week
For the sales week ending December 16, Circana Bookscan reports weekly sales of 28.6 million units, falling behind last year’s sales of 29.5 million units in the same week. But with Christmas on Monday, booksellers should see another very full week of sales leading into the holiday. As Circana Bookscan analyst Kristen McLean wrote a week ago, “Overall we expect the close of 2023 to look very much like 2022 — two shallower ‘Super Saturdays’ rather than a single high peak.” Unit sales are expected to run about 3 percent below last year’s totals. For the eight weeks of sales […]
The Very Best of the Best Books of 2023
The votes are all in and we’re ready to celebrate the consensus very best books of 2023, based on a broad collection of lists. James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store was both novel of the year and overall book of the year, followed in the voting by Safiya Sinclair’s How to Say Babylon and David Grann’s The Wager, which tied for nonfiction book of the year. Farrar, Straus outperformed this year with five titles among the top 20. Independent publishers were represented by newcomers Red Tower and Yale University Press, as well as Grove/Atlantic. Sinclair’s memoir was first […]
Our Schedule
This will be the last daily newsletter this week. We will be back at least once next week, probably towards the end of the week, to stay on top of whatever develops. Deals newsletters will maintain their regular schedule through to Monday’s weekly round-up, and from there will also be more occasional — depending upon the flow of deal reports. As always, PublishersMarketplace.com works for you 24/7 no matter what, and we will be reporting and clipping news to the website, adding new deals as they flow in, posting job openings and more. We wish all of our readers happy, […]
Giving A Holiday Discount on PM
With the holidays upon us, we have one of those very occasional discount offers available. If someone in your life would like access to PublishersMarketplace.com, they can enjoy all that our site has to offer at 40 percent off the usual price for the first month! To qualify, enter this code — Happy23 — in the Promo Code: box that appears in the payment plan section of the Registration page. Feel free to share this offer with friends, and enjoy the holidays with some extra data. The code is valid for just a short time, through December 27.