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Copyright

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

April 4, 2025 by Nathan Bransford

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 […]

Filed Under: This Week in Books Tagged With: A.I., A.O. Scott, Amazon, Copyright, Donald Trump, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hayao Miyazaki, Libraries, Neko Case, Penguin Random House, Tariffs, TikTok, Whiskey

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 […]

Filed Under: This Week in Books Tagged With: Amy Weiss-Meyer, Austin Kleon, ChatGPT, Copyright, Jennifer Jackson, Kimon de Greef, Ursula K. Le Guin

Watch out for book to film scams (This week in books)

June 17, 2022 by Nathan Bransford

This week! Books! First up, we continue to live in a golden age for scammers, and Anne R. Allen has an important post about a new, more polished publishing trap: the book to film scam, where a “film scout” suggests you pay for a new screenplay or treatment so they can shop it to streaming […]

Filed Under: This Week in Books Tagged With: Alexandra Alter, Anne R. Allen, Artificial Intelligence, Copyright, Elizabeth A. Harris, Ian Bogost, literary agents, Scams

Buying a rare book doesn’t mean you own the copyright (This week in books)

January 21, 2022 by Nathan Bransford

This week! Books! Some eclectic links for you this chilly week. A group of misguided “Dune-loving cryptocurrency enthusiasts” banded together to pay €2.9 million for a rare copy of filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s plans to adapt Dune for film, thinking that then meant they could release it to the public, produce an animated series, and/or produce […]

Filed Under: This Week in Books Tagged With: Andrew DeYoung, Angie Hodapp, Ben Dreyfuss, Bethanne Patrick, Copyright, Disney, Kate McKean, Kathryn Schulz, Kishōtenketsu, Lincoln Michel, Photography

S&S cancels Josh Hawley’s book deal (This week in books)

January 8, 2021 by Nathan Bransford

This week! Books! This week has been a heck of a decade. I don’t really know what to say about the incredibly distressing events of this week that others haven’t said more forcefully and eloquently, so I’m just going to move on to the books links. One consequence of the insurrection at the Capitol this […]

Filed Under: This Week in Books Tagged With: Copyright, Jessica Faust, Josh Hawley, Mike Shatzkin, publishing industry, Spiegel & Grau

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About Nathan

Hi, I’m Nathan. I’m the author of How to Write a Novel and the Jacob Wonderbar series, which was published by Penguin. I used to be a literary agent at Curtis Brown Ltd. and I’m dedicated to helping authors achieve their dreams. Let me help you with your book!

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My Books

How to Write A Novel
Cover of How to Publish a Book by Nathan Bransford
Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapo
Jacob Wonderbar for President of the Universe
Jacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp

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