This week! Books!
Author Whose $2 Million Book Deal Was Derailed by AI Concerns Says He’s Innocent (gift link) – Melissa Korn, Wall Street Journal – More on the author whose $2.5 million deal was derailed after his agents pulled the book due to suspicions of A.I. usage. Jerry Falade says he only used A.I. for research, that he never consented to having his manuscript run through A.I. detectors, and he’s retained legal counsel.
Why is Anthropic destroying books? – Kathryn James, The Guardian – One highly controversial element of the Anthropic class action lawsuit is that Anthropic was only found to be pirating books by acquiring them illegally. Now they’re legally buying used books by the truckload for “destructive scanning:” dismantling print books to scan them to train A.I.
Sales Up, Profits Down at HarperCollins in Fiscal 2026 – Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly – Despite perennial doom and gloom in publishing, major publisher HarperCollins had a 15% increase in revenue in its fourth quarter, though profits were dented by wholesaler Baker & Taylor’s bankruptcy.
Brian Murray Addresses AI Authorship Issues – Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly – Meanwhile, CEO Brian Murray called on the industry to address A.I. authorship. He acknowledges detection tools are likely to work, and calls on agents, authors, and publishers to work together on best practices.
The 50 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century – New York Times – A fun list of the best 50 thrillers of the 21st century. The consensus #1 is obvious, but I was disappointed to see that Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith didn’t make the list, which would have been in my top five.
See How Your Favorite Writers Voted in Our Thrillers Poll – New York Times – The Times also surveyed 59 writers on their top thriller picks, which reveals 1) pretty much everyone agrees Gone Girl is amazing and 2) no one can agree on what a thriller actually is.
Abolish the Top Ten Books List – Thea Lim, The Walrus – If lists aren’t your thing, you may enjoy this plea from Thea Lim to abolish book rankings already, which she argues voids books’ intrinsic worth by pitting them against each other.
There Is One Editor Behind Your Book Club’s Most Debated Titles (gift link) – Anna Silman, Wall Street Journal – What do wildly popular and controversial memoirs Strangers and The Tell have in common? Ambitious editor Whitney Frick.
‘It Ends with Us’ Sales Surpass 10 Million, Atria Says – Publishers Weekly – Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us has now sold an astonishing ten million copies.
George R.R. Martin says he’s fighting his own battle: ‘Sadness and depression’ – Alexandra Del Rosario, Los Angeles Times – A good reminder that even reaching the pinnacle of authordom does not solve all your problems.
How to do Book Research – Kate McKean, Agents + Books – Researching a book can feel like a daunting part of the writing process, but agent and author Kate McKean talks to bestseller Jo Piazza to illuminate 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:
- Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
- The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett
- Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
- Whistler by Ann Patchett
- Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
Adult print and e-book nonfiction:
- Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan
- Biological War by Annie Jacobsen
- Strangers by Belle Burden
- Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I’ve Cried About by Isabel Klee
- The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
Young adult hardcover:
- Rootbound by Margaret Owen
- Ruinous Ends by I.V. Marie
- Fake Skating by Lynn Painter
- Release Me by Tahereh Mafi
- If Only I Had Told Her by Laura Nowlin
Middle grade hardcover:
- Wonder by R.J. Palacio
- Wombat Waiting by Katherine Applegate
- Refugee by Alan Gratz
- Growing Home by Beth Ferry
- The Court of the Dead by Rick Riordan
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:
This A.I. Just Created Viruses Not Found in Nature – Carl Zimmer, New York Times – If only there were a relevant story about hubristic scientists creating living things they absolutely shouldn’t…
Have a great weekend!
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[hitches suspenders, makes fist, shakes it at sky] Back in the good old days, everyone knew what a thriller was: A thriller had HELICOPTERS. That’s how you knew it wasn’t a just a mystery featuring an eccentric in a houndstooth jacket or a dowager in a woolly jumper. But now it’s all woman goes back to her old home town, and there are dark scary woods, and some family member died 20 years ago or maybe actually didn’t, and somebody’s husband is way to good to be true, and oh, you can’t trust the narrator because they’re lying through their teeth. I tell you, kids and their so-called thrillers these days.
I like the helicopter threshold, but that would include FIFTY SHADES OF GREY haha.