Since the fall of Twitter I have struggled to find a place to share links and online articles that I find interesting. So I am now creating small ”link round up” posts and sharing here. Hope this ongoing series or posts surface some interesting news & thoughts for you.

Lots of attention was given to TikTok leveraging all the data they have collected in launching a new book imprint called 8th Note Press (which is also now printing books with Zando). It’s interesting that OverDrive (the library ebook lending platform) has also launched an imprint called Heights Press. It’s named after a place in Cleveland and will focus on kids’ titles. You can read OverDrive’s full press release here.

The Book Maven has a podcast called The Book Maven: A Literary Revue that is now six episodes deep. They’re 30 minutes long and touch on various topics and books. I’m still listening, but I’m on the fence on whether I’ll keep up. One I really like at the moment is Jeff O’Neal’s First Edition from BookRiot. He asks good questions and talks to folks spread throughout the publishing world. O’Neal really is best when he’s on his own, allowing him to chase any and every rabbit he wants.

With so many year-end and bestseller lists out there, I wanted to share one that I appreciate and keep up with throughout the year. It’s The Southern Indie Bestseller List, which is updated every Sunday with covers and books from the previous week. The info for this list is collected from independent booksellers from across the South. It’s an interesting look into what’s selling in the region.

Since the fall of Twitter I have struggled to find a place to share links and online articles that I find interesting. So I am now creating small ”link round up” posts and sharing here. Hope this ongoing series or posts surface some interesting news & thoughts for you.

Amazon is massive (that’s the kind of insightful breaking news you get here). But it is so stinking big that they have to automate many of their systems. If you did like many people have done and opted for a cheaper ad-supported kindle, be aware that ads for AI generate books are now in the mix. What a weird time to be selling books.

Here one of the most “fact of the matter” interesting take (or takedown?) on #BookTok and all of its influence. It’s worth a read. “BookTok isn’t actually a community driven by fans, writers, influencers, or even publishers. All of those people are merely a smokescreen.”

This last one is not an article but a 20-page report from the National Endowment of the Arts. It is titled Arts Participation Patterns in 2022: Highlights from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts and drops data facts such as, in 2022, only 40 percent of American men read books only 57 percent of women did. Both of these numbers are down from previous years. So now that we know this… why is it so and what do we do about it?

Here are three Things to Read online… and here is some background to my thinking… Since the fall of Twitter I have struggled to find a place to share links and online articles that I find interesting. I created a Mastodon account some time ago and I have had some really interesting conversations there, but it’s just never caught on with me. So I am going to start doing some book and publishing “link round up” type posts here. Mainly it will serve as an easy archive I can reference when talking books with folks. But who knows… maybe conversations will be sparked elsewhere. I’m hoping to keep these posts light enough to be able to post from mobile and have no idea if this format will work, but here it goes…

Thad McIlroy says, “Since I started pumping for AI and publishing a year or so ago I’ve had a constant concern that all of this would collapse upon itself. Just the hallucination problem is an ongoing nightmare…”

I have so very many issues with this one. It’s amazing how folks can talk about books and be sincere when saying things like what D. Watkins said on Salon, “Your bookshelf should be beautiful enough to make it onto someone’s Pinterest page.”

I was fascinated by this short think piece on the impact that book summary apps are having, when I got to this part: “Toby Mundy, executive director of the prestigious Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction, wonders if these apps might prove a gateway for readers to actual books.” I would like to report (via a Slack group I’m in) that all 12 of the 12 folks I know who use Blinkist have said that the app is a 100% replacement for the book and has never lead them to buy a book. So it seems the gate on that gateway is shut.