Has the Big 5 become the Big 6? (This week in books)

This week! Books!

Sourcebooks Cracks the Big Five – Katy Hershberger, Publishers Lunch – Lots of caveats here, as Sourcebooks is 75% owned by behemoth Penguin Random House, and as Jane Friedman noted in her newsletter, they do quite a few print deals with self-published authors who retain e-book rights. But it’s still a pretty impressive benchmark that Sourcebooks believes it has edged out existing Big 5 publisher Macmillan on print sales.

Lost in the plot: how would-be authors were fooled by AI staff and virtual offices in suspected global publishing scam – Kelly Burke, The Guardian – A close look at just some of the exploding number of A.I.-powered publishing scams out there.

Escape Artists | Romantasy at the End of the World – Daniel Yadin, The Drift / Romance is a Sub-Genre of Horror – Jessa Crispin, The Culture We Deserve / Sex Had Become a Chore. Then They Started Reading Romantasy. – Catherine Pearson, New York Times – The romantasy boom continues apace, and this week we have dueling think pieces from Daniel Yadin and Jessa Crispin about what it all means, along with a New York Times piece that goes straight into the We Should All Know Less About Each Other drawer.

Alice Wong, Writer and Relentless Advocate for Disability Rights, Dies at 51 – Clay Risen, New York Times – Alice Wong, author of Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life and founder of the Disability Visibility Project, passed away this week.

She Has Taken 30 Years to Write a 7-Part Novel About 1 Day. It’s a Sensation. – Dennis Zhou, New York Times Magazine / Solvej Balle’s Novels Rewire the Time Loop – Katy Waldman, The New Yorker – This past week included November 18, the day Danish author Solvej Balle’s protagonist Tara Selter gets trapped in a time loop.

It’s Time To Put The “Where Are All The Male Novelists?” Debate To Bed – Eliza Clark, British Vogue – The “where are the male novelists at” debate should have never gotten out of bed to begin with (seriously, has anyone asking that question ever stepped foot in a bookstore?), but Eliza Clark does a job at putting back to sleep.

You’re Writing a Book. So Stop Writing a Movie. – Rebecca Makkai, SubMakk – While we live in a golden age of television, your writing can swiftly go awry if you write a novel as if you’re writing a movie or TV show. (via John Ochwat)

How To Be An Author: What’s Your Next Book About? – Kate McKean, Agents + Books – You’ve written a book. What should the next one be? Agent and author Kate McKean breaks it down.

Did You Know Mapmakers Used to Make Up Fake Towns in Order to Catch Plagiarists? – Mark Cooper-Jones and Jay Foreman – Lit Hub – There’s a centuries-old practice where mapmakers intentionally introduce tiny errors into their maps to be able to prove plagiarism.

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. Exit Strategy by Lee Child and Andrew Child
2. The Strength of the Few by James Islington
3. Nash Falls by David Baldacci
4. The Widow by John Grisham
5. The King’s Ransom by Janet Evanovich

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. The Look by Michelle Obama with Meredith Koop
4. 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin
5. The American Revolution by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns

Young adult hardcover:

1. Fake Skating by Lynn Painter
2. If Only I Had Told Her by Laura Nowlin
3. Bitten by Jordan Stephanie Gray
4. Eternal Ruin by Tigest Girma
5. Hour of the Pumpkin Queen by Megan Shepherd

Middle grade hardcover:

1. The Complete Cookbook for Young Chefs by America’s Test Kitchen Kids
2. The Court of the Dead by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro
3. The Poisoned King by Katherine Rundell
4. The Complete Baking Book for Young Chefs by America’s Test Kitchen Kids
5. Pocket Bear by Katherine Applegate

This week on the blog

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

• Find and delete these phrases from your novel

And keep up with the discussion in all the places!

• Follow me on Bluesky
• Check out the Bransforums

And finally:

Elon Musk’s Grok AI tells users he is fitter than LeBron James and smarter than Leonardo da Vinci – Josh Taylor, The Guardian – Yes, I’m so, so glad the person designing a sycophantic A.I. chatbot has more access to resources than any other human being on the planet, thanks for asking.

Have a great weekend!

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