Moral Agency

The Association of American Literary Agents’ second annual People of Publishing conference convened agents and other industry pros in Manhattan yesterday, where conversation swirled around whether economic changes in the book business are jeopardizing ethical literary representation. While publishing preps for the Frankfurt Buchmesse next week, we surveyed agents from around the world about the fiction, nonfiction, and translations they expect will be hot items at the rights fair. Audiobook and e-book platform Libro.fm is teaming with Silent Book Club, which organizes social reading meet-ups, on a week of events across the U.S. and several other countries intended to build awareness around the freedom to read. In other news, a federal appeals court has, for the first time, rejected a fair use argument for scraping publisher content to train AI, in a ruling on Thomas Reuters’s copyright suit against the now-defunct startup Ross Intelligence, via NiemanLab. Emma Alpern digs into how the Anthropic settlement is a significant windfall for publishers, while authors’ claims have been more lackluster, for Vulture. Netflix is rounding out the cast for its adaptation of Hannah Grace’s hockey romance Icebreaker, per Deadline. The Guardian shines light on the growing number of male romance readers. Audible users can now “talk” to characters and ask questions about the books they’re listening to with a new suite of AI-powered features, via Tech Crunch. David Steinberger sits down with Rakuten Kobo CEO Michael Tamblyn on the latest Open Book podcast episode. And Emily Wilson is still holding strong on the IPC’s Top 40 bestseller lists.