Conflicting Signals

In a potential blow to creators and copyright holders, a federal judge has ruled that AI firm Anthropic did not break the law when it trained its chatbot on copyrighted books without authors or publishers’ permission—but must go to trial for allegedly using pirated versions of the books. Go figure. The International Thriller Writers convened on New York City last week for the 20th annual ThrillerFest, a six-day celebration of all things thriller, including the presentation of the organization’s coveted awards. In our final dispatch from this year’s Beijing International Book Fair, we take the temperature of the Chinese children’s market. Romantasy powerhouse Sarah J. Maas has inked an exclusive, multiyear, worldwide licensing agreement with IMG, extending her characters into apparel, beauty, games, and more, per the Hollywood Reporter. Defector argues that literary publishing has become dominated by women only as the enterprise has become less prestigious and more precarious. Meanwhile, on Substack, author Lincoln Michel addresses reports of literary fiction’s inexorable decline. And the Detroit Free Press opines about the growing number of authors using AI to write their books.