Jane Friedman

Today’s guest post is by author and editor Patrice Gopo. Leading up to the release of the anthology I edited, other writers often said to me, “That’s so great that you’ll have help promoting the book.” The implication of these comments was that I wouldn’t be alone in the author-side promotion efforts. A book with multiple contributors would have many more hands to lighten the promotion load. In theory, there was a great deal of truth in those statements.

While there are more than 100 lawsuits currently in progress against AI companies for copyright infringement, Michael Cader at Publishers Lunch writes that this latest one is “winnable” and “stands on new, undisputable legal ground if supported by the facts.” The short version: Google used access to digital copies of books via Google Books, the Google Play bookstore, and Google Scholar—that is, copies provided by publishers for those specific platforms—to train its Gemini model.

According to Circana BookScan, print book sales are down 0.3 percent versus 2025. Adult fiction grew 5.7 percent, while adult nonfiction fell 5.8 percent. Self-help had the biggest decline of all, about 24 percent, partly due to the declining sales of The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. Learn more. The bestselling title of the year so far is Theo of Golden by Allen Levi, initially self-published before being picked up by Simon & Schuster.

This insight from reader and columnist Bonnie Jean Feldkamp might inspire a publisher or two out there to do some creative market research. Feldkamp says, “Chicken Soup for the Soul’s latest newsletter talks about how they did a recent merchandise giveaway that essentially crowdsourced how their books were being displayed, and it resulted in them changing their book spine design.

A new study finds that in a blind test, audiobook listeners rated an AI multi-cast narration as slightly better than a single human narrator on character-driven scenes. The study was performed by the well-regarded Edison Research, a leader in audio market research, and commissioned by Spoken, an AI audiobook production company.

I had overlooked the following news until reader and librarian Jessamyn West brought it to my attention.

“Seinfeld's Restaurant” by mertxe is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 . Today’s guest post is by author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. I have what many people consider a dream job: I write books about some of the most popular TV shows in history. I’ve even become a New York Timesbestseller doing so. My nine traditionally published books include Seinfeldia, Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, Sex and the City and Us, and, most recently, Parks and Rec.

Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash Today’s guest post is by editor Tiffany Yates Martin. Join her on Wednesday, July 22, for the online class Mastering Narrative Flow. You’ve worked out a rock-solid plot, created strong character arcs, and managed to get it all on the page in your finished manuscript. So why does your story still feel choppy, disconnected, or episodic?

Photo by Kenneth Surillo Today’s post is by novelist and writing instructor Lesley Krueger. A few years ago, a friend and I were walking past a renovation project. A complete gut job of a two-story brick house across the street from ours. “Did you know the people who lived there?” she asked. “I never spoke to them. They weren’t exactly sociable. But one day, something really strange happened.” The man had moved in sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s.

In his latest analysis of dealmaking trends, Michael Cader at Publishers Lunch reports that while adult fiction has remained strong, six-figure deals for nonfiction are 41 percent lower than a year ago. He notes some of this decline is driven by Penguin Random House and HarperCollins pulling back on deals. Learn more (paid sub required). Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education.