A reminder that Monday, November 3, is the last day we will accept submissions for our next free eBook sampler, Buzz Books: Spring/Summer 2026. Submitted titles should have publication dates between February and September 2026. Accepted titles will be excerpted in our seasonal sampler, which publishes in January and will be available for free to booksellers, librarians, reviewers, prize committees, and more through NetGalley and Edelweiss, as well as through consumer retail platforms for readers (and influencers) who want to plan their TBRs. Submit your titles for Buzz Books: Spring/Summer 2026 here. We are also still accepting submissions for our […]
People 10/30
August Book Sales Fell 10 Percent
The Association of American Publishers announced August sales data from participating StatShot publishers, reporting trade sales of $716 million in the month, down 9.6 percent from last year. Adult books sold $522 million, down 10 percent. Fiction sold $304 million, down 3 percent, and adult nonfiction fell 17 percent to $218 million. Hardcovers sold $164 (down 4 percent), paperbacks sold $183 million (down 15.5 percent), digital audio sold $79.5 million (down 4 percent), and ebooks sold $75.9 million (down 4 percent). In children’s and YA books, sales fell 9.6 percent to $194 million, with $162 million in fiction sales (down […]
Powell’s Books Lays Off Staff
Powell’s Books in Portland has laid off staff, reports Oregon Live, “bringing the total to more than two dozen employees in the past four months.” The latest round included 13 employees across a number of roles. The bookstore did not specify which departments were downsized. “As with many businesses right now, we’re seeing expenses rise faster than sales,” Powell’s wrote in a statement earlier this week. “This has been an ongoing challenge since the pandemic, and while we’ve taken many steps to grow revenue and control costs, this most recent action was an unfortunate but necessary step to help ensure […]
People 10/29
Academic Study Shows General Readers May Prefer AI Generated Text Over Expert Writing
New York District Court Judge Sidney H. Stein’s ruling allowing a trial to proceed on authors’ allegations that ChatGPT infringes copyright found that the LLM’s outputs include “such copyrightable elements of plaintiffs’ original works as plot, setting, and characters.” In denying OpenAI’s motion to dismiss, he determined that the author plaintiffs cleared the bar of having “alleged some outputs that a reasonable jury could find are substantially similar to plaintiffs’ works.” Judge Stein’s analysis of both summaries of books by George R.R. Martin and AI-generated outlines for sequels to those books “convey[s] the overall tone and feel of the original […]