Facebook: Scam central (This week in books)

This week! Books!

Thanks so much to everyone who attended monthly (did I mention they’re free) Office Hours last night! Now that we’ve had a few of them, I’m thinking about changing things up and adding theme nights. But what would you like to see? First page critiques? Query workshop? Advanced writing craft? Too intimidated by video and we should switch to Discord? Let me know in the comments or shoot me an email. If you’re reading this via the newsletter, you can just hit reply.

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show – Jeff Horwitz, Reuters – One of the topics that came up last night was author-targeted scams, which are just utterly rampant in a maddening way. Not helping the problem is Facebook, which, according to a recent report, is very knowingly pocketing 10% of their annual revenue from scammers and failing to act on 96% of user reports of fraudulent behavior. I don’t see how things like this stop without jail time for executives.

Predatory Opt-Outs: The Speculators Come for the Anthropic Copyright Settlement – Victoria Strauss, Writer Beware – Watch out for companies urging you to opt out of the Anthropic copyright settlement.

commiseration content – Leigh Stein, Attention Economy – For a long time, I’ve wondered whether I was just being an old school former agent whenever I cringe about authors posting publicly about their submissions–how long they have been on sub, their rejections, and the travails of the process. Aren’t they just making life harder for themselves and weakening their agent’s negotiating position by making their project seem like a not-hot commodity? Well, current agent Carly Watters says no, you shouldn’t post publicly, for the same reasons as mine (she also wonders if she’s being old school lol). Leigh Stein points out that this kind of commiseration content might gain you writer followers, but probably not future reader followers.

Interview: Fisher the Bookseller Explains How Bookstores Decide Which Books to Sell – Lincoln Michel, Counter Craft – Nearly everyone connected to publishing is guilty of treating it like a top down business where publishers decide what readers should read from up on high. But an absolutely crucial link in the publishing industry is composed of book buyers, who decide on the titles bookstores will stock. Author Lincoln Michel talks to “Fisher the Bookseller” about how it works.

Knowing when to type ‘The End’ – Erin Bowman, From the Desk of Erin Bowman – How do you know where to end the book? It can certainly be tricky! Author Erin Bowman has some good advice with an assist from Susan Dennard.

Publisher apologises to author Kate Clanchy four years after book controversy – Katie Razzall, BBC – Woo boy. Amid industry reckonings over representations of race and publishing industry bias in the early 2020s, author Kate Clanchy was caught in a dispute about whether her depictions of children in her memoirs were racist. Now, her publisher, Pan Macmillan, has apologized for not standing behind her.

The Nature and Value of Loneliness for Writers – Don Martin, Writers Digest – You must be a degree of lonely in order to chain yourself to a laptop long enough to write a book, but balance is everything. Author Don Martin has some thoughts on how to navigate this inescapable part of the process.

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. The Black Wolf by Louise Penny
2. The Widow by John Grisham
3. Bonds of Hercules by Jasmine Mas
4. The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown
5. The Proving Ground by Michael Connelly

Adult print and e-book nonfiction:

1. Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre
2. How to Test Negative for Stupid by John Kennedy
3. 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin
4. Outlive by Peter Attia with Bill Gifford
5. The Uncool by Cameron Crowe

Young adult hardcover:

1. Hazelthorn by C.G. Drews
2. Fake Skating by Lynn Painter
3. Hour of the Pumpkin Queen by Megan Shepherd
4. Bitten by Jordan Stephanie Gray
5. Never Ever After by Sue Lynn Tan

Middle grade hardcover:

1. The Court of the Dead by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro
2. The Complete Cookbook for Young Chefs by America’s Test Kitchen Kids
3. Wonder by R.J. Palacio
4. The Poisoned King by Katherine Rundell
5. Troubling Tonsils! by Aaron Reynolds

This week on the blog

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

• It’s hard to engage with a character who isn’t trying

And keep up with the discussion in all the places!

• Follow me on Bluesky
• Check out the Bransforums

And finally:

Inside Uniqlo’s Quest for Global Dominance – Lauren Collins, The New Yorker – Like many, I’ve become a fan of Uniqlo’s affordable-but-quality-but-stylish clothes, and I really enjoyed this profile of the company’s rise.

Have a great weekend!

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