Nate Hoffelder

Baker & Taylor Prepares Plan to Shut Down At a town hall yesterday, B&T owner and CEO Aman Kochar announced that following the termination of the ReaderLink acquisition deal, he does not see a path to keep the library wholesaler in business.

Baker & Taylor, a giant in the library distribution industry, is done.
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Best Book Editing Software for Authors in 2025 Discover the best book editing software for writers. Compare tools like Grammarly, ProWritingAid, Hemingway, and more to polish your manuscript.

Here are a few apps you can use to edit your next book.
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Hisn, Hern, Yourn, Ourn John in Tucson, Arizona, remembers his grandfather used the possessives hisn, hern, yourn, and ourn, as in Those cattle are hisn or That house is hern. These archaic forms originated hundreds of…

Did you know that antique possessive pronouns like hisn and yourn are still hanging on in the backwoods?
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An Important Copyright Lawsuit Not About AI Though AI has dominated the copyright news cycle, one of the most important ongoing cases involves two real estate giants and regular human-created images.

There's a copyright infringement lawsuit going on right now which has nothing to do with AI, but could result in over $7 billion in damages.
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Scoop: Microsoft looks to build AI marketplace for publishers Copilot would be the first buyer in the Publisher Content Marketplace.

Move over, NFTs - Microsoft is building a marketplace for publishers to license content to AI companies.
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2025.40: The AI Slop Era Arrives The best Stratechery content from the week of October 6, 2025, including the arrival of the AI Slop Era, what “China Hawk” really means, and Steve Ballmer and the Clippers catastrophe.

2025.40: The AI Slop Era Arrives
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Weekly News: 29th September 2025 - Author Help Every week, we post a curated list of links that authors should find useful or interesting. Here are this week’s links: Book a FREE consultation to find out how we can help you publish your book.

Weekly News: 29th September 2025
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Weekly News: 29th September 2025 - Author Help Every week, we post a curated list of links that authors should find useful or interesting. Here are this week’s links: Book a FREE consultation to find out how we can help you publish your book.

Weekly News: 29th September 2025
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Anthropic settlement class now searchable (This week in books) This week! Books! Anthropic Copyright Settlement Website – If your book was pirated by Anthropic and you or your publisher registered your copyright within five years, you may be in the settlement…

Anthropic settlement class now searchable (This week in books)
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Friday’s Endnotes – 10/03/25
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12 Ways Not to Start a Novel How do we start a novel? So much needs to go in an opener. But some openers have been done to death. So here are 12 ways not to start a novel

Anne R Allen shares 12 ways not to start a novel.
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Estate Planning for Authors and Creatives - SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association by Brenda W. Clough. Facing your own mortality isn’t fun, but if you’re a writer or creative, ignoring it could leave your intellectual property in chaos. This article walks you through the essential…

Brenda W. Clough shares estate planning advice for authors.
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This is important, otherwise an author's work might suffer the same fate as Arthur Conan Doyle's estate, which ended up under the control of distant relatives (not descendants, even).

Bartz v. Anthropic Settlement: An Update for Authors - Writer Beware BACKGROUND A year ago, a group of authors filed suit against AI company Anthropic over its creation of an enormous library of digitized books to train its Claude LLMs, arguing that because Anthropic…

Here's an update on the Anthropic piracy settlement from Victoria Strauss.
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Five Copyright Office Resources You May Not Know Exist | Copyright The U.S. Copyright Office provides a wide range of resources to support creators, educators, and other copyright users, but some of the most valuable tools can fly under the radar. Here are five…

The Library of Congress brings our attention to 5 copyright resources you might not know exists.

But he's still significantly wrong if you use AI to do things you can't like analyze your story for the tropes and themes (see Autocrit).

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Rely on A.I. at your peril Here’s my problem whenever I try to play a game of chess against a computer. Inevitably, I start up a game and plug along just fine until, at a certain point, I get a bit stuck and feel unsure of my…

Nathan Bransford warns that you can rely on AI at your peril, and he does have a point when it comes to generative AI (using it weakens your creative muscles).
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Rely on A.I. at your peril Here’s my problem whenever I try to play a game of chess against a computer. Inevitably, I start up a game and plug along just fine until, at a certain point, I get a bit stuck and feel unsure of my…

Weekly News: 22nd September 2025
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Trump allies buying TikTok (This Week in Books) This week! Books! First up, a happy plug. It’s always so exciting to see a book I’ve worked on in manuscript form come to fruition, let alone when it becomes a freakin’ Jenna Hager Bush Today Show…

Trump allies buying TikTok (This Week in Books)
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Friday’s Endnotes – 09/26/25
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Return of the Nigerian Prince Redux: Beware Book Club and Book Review Scams - Writer Beware A few weeks ago, I wrote about a rising and extremely prolific marketing scam that I’ve been able to trace back to operators in Nigeria. Using highly personalized (AI-generated) email solicitations…

Victoria Strauss shares more details about new AI marketing scams.
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Examples of Book Advertising That Drive Sales See real author success stories with smart book ads. Learn proven strategies for selling more copies and boosting visibility as a self-published author.

Bookbaby has several examples of book marketing that worked.
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Kobo Now Supports Exporting Annotations From Kobo eBooks It looks like Kobo is in the process of finally adding support for exporting annotations from Kobo ebooks, with support for exporting notes and highlights in

Kobo now supports exporting annotations.
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The 18th-century legal case that changed the face of music copyright law When Johann Christian Bach sued unauthorized publishers in 18th-century London, he won legal recognition for musical works as intellectual property. According to Eyal Brook, his victory still echoes…

Johann Christian Bach's 1777 lawsuit against sheet music publishers marked the first time that music was covered by copyright under English law.

Trump Sues Penguin Random House, ‘New York Times’ for $15 Billion President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit accusing the New York Times and four of its reporters, as well as Penguin Random House, which published the book Lucky Loser, of trying to undermine his…

Trump filed a frivolous lawsuit against Penguin RandomHouse and the NYTimes this week. buff.ly/Bzes3T5

The lawsuit was thrown out days later.
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The Queue: Library News for the Week Ending September 19, 2025 Among the week's headlines: The Trump Administration's censorship efforts are ramping up; Delaware passes a Freedom to Read Law; why an Alabama library is still being denied state funding; and a look…

The Queue: Library News for the Week Ending September 19, 2025
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State-sponsored censorship week (This week in books) This week! Books! I’m back, and luckily nothing at all happened while I was away (okay everything happened while I was away). Lots and lots of links this week! Let’s get to it. 2026 We Need Diverse…

State-sponsored censorship week (This week in books)
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Authors Sue Apple, Alleging AI Was Built with Pirated Books Authors Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson sue Apple, alleging it used pirated books from Books3 to train its AI without consent or payment.

Apple is now being sued over the pirated ebooks which were allegedly fed to its LLM.

Friday’s Endnotes – 09/19/25
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Bigme HiBreak Pro Color is a smartphone with an E Ink color display, Android 14, and 5G - Liliputing Bigme HiBreak Pro Color is a smartphone with an E Ink color display, Android 14, and 5G

The Bigme HiBreak Pro Color is going to have a 6" color E-ink screen and sell for $469 when it is released next month.
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Judge Rebukes Anthropic Copyright Settlement Yesterday, the judge heavily rebuked the Anthropic settlement. Though he stopped short of rejecting it outright, here’s why it has a rough path ahead.

The settlement in the Anthropic piracy lawsuit is facing stiff opposition from the presiding judge.
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