ChatGPT

A.I. has improved a lot. I’m still skeptical it’s useful for writing and editing

March 24, 2025 by Nathan Bransford

I spent a fair chunk of my weekend playing around with various A.I. tools, and, for the first time ever, I came away genuinely impressed by some of its outputs. I’m as surprised as you are. If your first impression of ChatGPT calcified a year or two ago as you watched it spew out weird […]

Beware of literary agency fraud (This week in books)

September 8, 2023 by Nathan Bransford

This week! Books! Book scammers continue to prey on unsuspecting authors, and one of the latest versions involves people impersonating real literary agents, sending fraudulent contracts, and then asking for money. These scams have been around for a while, but seem to be reaching new levels of sophistication. Remember: no reputable agent will ask you […]

A new literary agent scam to watch out for (This week in books)

April 21, 2023 by Nathan Bransford

This week! Books! Victoria Strauss at the indispensable site Writer Beware has a new scam to watch for, which starts with a “literary agent” promising to work only on commission who will take your book to the next level, only for additional fees to start rolling in. Be careful out there! Also from Writer Beware, […]

How to fight book bans (This week in books)

April 7, 2023 by Nathan Bransford

This week! Books! The resurgence of book bans remains distressingly rampant as parents try to control not just what their own kids read, but other kids as well. As Jamelle Bouie notes, what some are calling “parents rights” is really “when some parents have the right to dominate all the others.” Alyssa Rosenberg has some […]

Why are YA sales declining? (This week in books)

March 24, 2023 by Nathan Bransford

This week! Books! News came this week that after years of increasing market share, young adult fiction is now among the only categories posting declines in sales. The #takes have rolled in, and many people cited book bans, a decrease in B&N shelf space for YA, and a lingering lack of diversity. Librarian Karen Jensen […]

No, AI-generated work is not copyrightable (This week in books)

March 17, 2023 by Nathan Bransford

This week! Books! GPT-4 has arrived, leading to all sort of breathless headlines like this one from The Atlantic: ChatGPT Changed Everything. Now Its Follow-Up Is Here. Uhhhh… what exactly has it changed apart from prompting tech types and their financial enablers to lose their collective minds? Longtime readers know I am far from a […]