AI search could bring the most radical change the internet has seen since Google became the world's dominant search engine
Google announced a raft of releases at its I/O 23 developer conference. From changes to its Maps functionality to a new ‘Magic' photo editor and composer, the tech giant unveiled a host of AI-driven features designed to improve customer experience. Read more
Amazon continued to cash in on our new shop-work-relax-from-home habits in the first three months of this year, reporting a huge rise in sales and a tripling of profits.
Almost every aspect of the Covid-19 pandemic has served to boost the tech giant's revenues, from video streaming to grocery delivery.
It said it expects the boom to continue over the next few months. Read more
Popular histories present the Boston Tea Party as a rebellion against taxes. Yet what the colonists objected to more than anything was the idea of an all-powerful corporate middleman regulating commerce. They viewed the 1773 protest in Boston Harbor as a victory for liberty and a blow against the British East India Company's trade monopoly.
I periodically write about Google Books here, so I thought I'd point out something that I've noticed recently that should be concerning to anyone accustomed to treating it as the largest collection of books: it appears that when you use a year constraint on book search, the search index has dramatically constricted to the point of being, essentially, broken.
In 2013, I observed a conversation on Twitter where a publisher said they didn't believe in author websites "for a lot of authors"-that social was a better place for authors to spend time from a marketing perspective.
It bothered me, and I ended up writing a blog post about it, exploring why a publisher might think this-rightly or wrongly. Read more
What a difference the passage of six years makes, Mike Shatzkin reminded us, introducing the Digital Book World conference in New York yesterday (Tuesday 8th March). Read more
How can we accept the decline of newspapers and magazines, and the quality journalism therein, or accept the exploitation of writers? How can we retain valuable reporting, which requires payment? Read more
Today, federal judge Denny Chin rejected a copyright challenge Google's practices of scanning books into digital format and presenting snippets of those scans in search results because the practices qualify as fair use. It's an exciting and hard-fought victory for Google, one that took nearly a decade of litigation and many millions of dollars to achieve. Read more
'I'm very reassuringly honest. It's a job as well as a calling. It's my living - I'm the chief breadwinner in my house. My husband is retired, he supported me through the two decades while I wasn't making enough to live on, and was doing all kinds of things to do with writing to survive - judging competitions, running workshops, appraising manuscripts.
‘My settings of Europe and English visitors weren't really doing it for them, so we decided Scotland would be good. I thought an island would be great, because it's a small community, and it's an opportunity for my main character to get away from it all. The team at HarperCollins have been so supportive and enthusiastic... Read more
For the past five years or so, I've read books on my phone. The practice started innocently enough. I write book reviews from time to time, and so publishers sometimes send me upcoming titles that fall roughly within my interests. Read more
The Guardian calls Irish-Indian poet Nikita Gill "Britain's most-followed poet on social media"-she has 780,000 Instagram followers and 180,000 TikTok followers, and her Instapoetry has been reshared by the likes of Khloe Kardashian, Alanis Morissette, and Sam Smith-and she has published seven volumes of poetry and two novels in the U.K. But she is far less known on this side of the pond. Read more
Nikkolas Smith knows a thing or two about book bans. The illustrator has created five picture books over the last three years-four of which have been yanked off library shelves. There's I am Ruby Bridges, about the civil rights icon; That Flag about the confederate flag; Born on the Water, which explores slavery; and The Artivist which features a child supporting trans kids.
Simon & Schuster has acquired the largest Dutch publishing group Veen Bosch & Keuning, including all of its publishers in the Netherlands and Belgium, as well as sister companies Thinium and Bookchoice.
The Publishers Association (PA) has criticised the government's response to a House of Lords report on AI, saying that it has failed to make "any tangible commitments to protect the creative industries against mass copyright infringement".
'Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.'
'I'm very reassuringly honest'
‘My settings of Europe and English visitors weren't really doing it for them, so we decided Scotland would be good. I thought an island would be great, because it's a small community, and it's an opportunity for my main character to get away from it all. The team at HarperCollins have been so supportive and enthusiastic... Read more