Ken Follett is changing English-language publishers, moving to Hachette Book Group and Hachette UK — after publishing with Penguin for 45 years, and with Pan Macmillan for 35 years. Follett’s next novel, due out on an unspecified date in 2025, will be published by Grand Central in the US and Quercus in the UK. The Follett Office sold rights to Ben Sevier at Grand Central (NA) and Jon Butler at Quercus (UK/Commonwealth), in a one-book deal. Follett said in the announcement, “This is the beginning of an exciting new phase for me: new publisher, new editors, new sales force. I’m […]
Authors
One World Sends Authors on Residency
In an unusual initiative in author care, One World sent 21 of its queer and BIPOC writers on residency at Art Omi in upstate New York this week. Writers across disciplines including fiction, nonfiction, and journalism, gathered on the grounds in Ghent, NY, which has resident accommodations and also houses a sprawling sculpture garden. The initiative was spearheaded by executive editor Nicole Counts. One World authors received an email about the program, which encouraged them to apply. “One World sees community as the intentional cultivation of a space where people can be safely heard, seen, and celebrated,” said Counts in […]
Open Submissions, Closed to AI
On Monday, Angry Robot Books announced an open submissions period for late April, but with a twist: “We will be doing things very different this year. We will be using something called Storywise, which is a non generative AI system that will help us sort submissions. This means that it does not learn from author’s works to inform an AI model, and therefore the AI model is not trained by your work.” But the community objected strongly to any use of AI in evaluating authors’ material. The publisher quickly dropped the idea, posting: “We have been watching & listening to […]
Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud On Generative AI
As we have noted recently, the various AI companies (and their backers) have dutifully filed comments with the US Copyright Office explaining why they believe training their systems on copyrighted work is fair use and “just math.” So it’s notable that vice president of audio at Stability AI Ed Newton-Rex left the company recently and made clear at the Cerebral Valley AI Summit he believes those arguments are wrong. (He oversaw their music creation product, Stability Audio.) He resigned “because I don’t agree with the company’s opinion that training generative AI models on copyrighted works is ‘fair use’.” As he […]
NBA Nominee Bilal Explains Plans to Speak Out at National Book Awards Ceremony
Finalist for the NBA fiction award for TEMPLE FOLK Aaliyah Bilal indicated to the NYT in their story that followed ours “that a number of finalists planned to take the stage at the end of the [awards] ceremony” on Wednesday night “as one person reads the statement. In framing the call for a cease-fire, she said, she and other writers wanted to demonstrate their sensitivity to losses on all sides and intend to specifically denounce antisemitism.” Bilal says: “It was very important, as we were constructing it, that we were clear that we are sensitive to all of the antisemitism going […]
Still Wily
Alex Blasdel has a “long read” piece in the Guardian about Andrew Wylie that’s a melange of eulogy, profile, mild takedown and perhaps book proposal. The reporter understands the Wylie myth-making and reporters’ role in perpetuating it, but at the same time can’t help but add to it: “Wylie is the world’s most mythologized literary agent, it is partly because the caricature of him as a plunderer of literary talent and pillager of other agencies has been so irresistible to the media, and at times to Wylie himself.” Yet he is billed as “the world’s most renowned – and for […]