Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Two Scams Target Author Hopes
Two items came across my laptop this morning in the same vein: scammers trying to fake out authors. In one case (via Publishers Lunch), it is to get them to opt-out of the settlement with OpenAI in the hopes of trading $3000 for $150,000 in damages–even though no one really knows what the OpenAI settlement will shake out to be on a per work basis. My guess is that this law firm then wants to represent these plaintiffs in some outside action, but it’s hard to know. In any case, it is a confusing, vague explanation of the pros and cons of signing up with this law firm. Warning: here is the link to the landing page of ClaimsHero which is NOT IN ANY WAY AFFILIATED WITH THE EXISTING SETTLEMENT. Seriously, do your homework before looking at this link.
The other is targeting hopeful authors in a more classic “hey I can help you” fraud case. Someone posing as mega-selling author Kristin Hannah is emailing authors about helping them get published. Hannah’s agent confirmed that this is indeed an imposter, and I would assume that anyone responding to the email would be asked to fork over cash, rights, personal info, or possibly all three. Just….be careful out there.
Writers Are Using AI. Just Not All in the Same Way.
Are you shocked that writers who describe themselves as “thought leaders” are those most likely to use AI? (84%) Or that PR/comms writers are hot on their heels? (73%). I am not. (The best test of whether or not someone is a real thought leader is to ask them if they are a thought leader. If they say yes, I would strongly suggest shorting whatever it is they are out there stumping for). I was surprised that 11% of fiction writers report using AI to “produce” publishable text. Full results of this survey are worth browsing. The upshot here is that the majority of writers are using AI for some things (this writers, such as he is, included, though only for research and data analysis at this point).
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It’s Tougher to Decide What Books to Put On the Shelves Than You Might Think
I have a hard enough time navigating publisher catalogs for coverage purposes, but deciding which books, and how many, of the thousands and thousands available every season is a truly mystifying task. This interview with a book buyer for a small store lays out the realities of deciding: a fuzzy mix of data (print runs, past sales numbers) and curation (taste, vibes, trends, etc). The maddening part too is that you might not know if you made the right call, as each store is different and you cannot A/B test this stuff.
Brain-On Science Fiction and Fantasy Books
I don’t love using algorithm-derived jargon, but people instantly get what “brain-on” reading is (and infer immediately its opposite). Old guys like me would just refer to this kind of book as literary sci-fi or fantasy, though anymore I don’t care what you call it. Just pick it up.
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