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Copyright still requires human authorship, but read the fine print (This week in books)

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This week! Books!

The Trump tariffs are tanking your 401k at the moment (if you’re lucky enough to have one), but how will they affect publishers, whose books are often printed in Asia and Europe? According to Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at the WSJ, they don’t really know either.

The U.S. Copyright Office, apparently one of the last functions of the U.S. government still in operation, released a highly-anticipated report on A.I. and copyright that affirms that “copyright protection in the United States requires human authorship.” Don’t just follow the stark headlines because there are nuances here, including the fact that if A.I. is used to “assist” instead of “replace” human creativity and/or if A.I. outputs are “arranged” into an original work of authorship, it may still be copyrightable. But creative prompts alone aren’t enough to reach the threshold.

Speaking of, a new ChatGPT image generator resulted in Studio Ghibli-style A.I. slop going viral this past week, which raises all sorts of legal and ethical issues that OpenAI appears to care not a whit about, considering CEO Sam Altman changed his Twitter photo to a Ghibli-style image. Ghibli mastermind Hayao Miyazaki has previously called A.I. “an insult to life itself.”

Amazon has emerged as one of the potential buyers of TikTok. Thanks, I don’t like it, but I can confirm that canceling your Amazon Prime tastes great.

Four of the Big 5 major publishers, along with Scholastic, sent a letter to Congress expressing deep concern over the gutting of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. You’ll never guess which of the Big 5 publishers refrained from signing the letter. (Yes you will, it was Rupert Murdoch-owned HarperCollins).

Oh but hey, Penguin Random House had record sales in 2024, led by higher prices and audiobooks.

It was always a little strange that an activity like National Novel Writing Month had an associated non-profit, but after numerous headwinds, not least of which was a needless A.I. controversy, it will be shutting down.

The Great Gatsby is turning one hundred years old, and A.O. Scott has an interesting feature on its cultural longevity.

And musician Neko Case has a new book and a new album in the works. With the big beast that is Spotify bearing down on musicians, she is thinking about how artists should go smaller.

This week in bestsellers

Here are the top five NY Times bestsellers in a few key categories. (All links are affiliate links):

Adult print and e-book fiction:

  1. Lethal Prey by John Sandford
  2. Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
  3. Nobody’s Fool by Harlan Coben
  4. Summer in the City by Alex Aster
  5. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

Adult print and e-book nonfiction:

  1. Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
  2. Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams
  3. Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
  4. The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
  5. When the Going Was Good by Graydon Carter with James Fox

Young adult hardcover:

  1. Wings of Starlight by Allison Saft
  2. Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli
  3. Rebel Witch by Kristen Ciccarelli
  4. The Shadow Bride by Shelby Mahurin
  5. Nothing Like the Movies by Lynn Painter

Middle grade hardcover:

  1. Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell
  2. The Complete Cookbook for Young Chefs by America’s Test Kitchen Kids
  3. Refugee by Alan Gratz
  4. River of Spirits by Shana Targosz
  5. Isle of Ever by Jen Calonita

This week on the blog

In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:

And keep up with the discussion in all the places!

And finally, for whiskey lovers out there, Japanese company Suntory may shift its whiskeys to its home market and Asia in the wake of Trump tariffs. What a week.

Have a great weekend!

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Photo: The Huntington, San Marino, CA

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Yvonne T Osborne says

    Enjoyed, as always! It felt great to cancel Prime and even better to put them at the bottom of my “buy” buttons. I’d like to ditch them entirely, but as a fledgling newbie, can’t deny their market reach.

  2. Yvonne T Osborne says

    Thanks also for spreading the word about Trump’s executive order canceling library grants. A good time for everyone to tweak their representative’s year.

  3. Petrea Burchard says

    I can confirm that canceling Prime is really fun. There’s a questionnaire at the end that asks why you’re canceling [my answer: Bezos/politics] and what can they do to get you to come back [make Amazon an employee-owned company]…

    (If you cancel they don’t pro-rate, they simply won’t auto-renew when your paid membership is up.)