Publishing Company Blog: October 2023

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

‘AI’ named most notable word of 2023 by Collins dictionary

Chosen from a list that includes ‘greedflation’, ‘nepo baby’ and ‘deinfluencing’, use of term has quadrupled this year

Britons go map-crazy, with geographical games and books becoming bestsellers

London tube game Metro Memory is a surprise hit, with geography books also finding favour with readers

Publishing associations urge UK government to protect copyrighted works from AI

Statement asks government to help stop AI tools ‘using copyright-protected works with impunity’

Monday, October 30, 2023

Salman Rushdie expected to testify at stabbing trial in January

Alleged attacker Hadi Matar pleaded not guilty to attempted murder, following incident in Chautauqua, New York, that left Rushdie blind in one eye

Sunday, October 29, 2023

Yeats’ play on sale for £125,000 – thanks to message from the dead

A 1924 seance has solved the mystery surrounding a signed copy of the dramatist’s first play

Letters reveal the dispute that pushed poet Thomas Chatterton to the brink

The romantic writer took his own life aged just 17 after a row with Horace Walpole

Friday, October 27, 2023

Hunt on for book containing Wilkie Collins’s criticism of friend Dickens

Collins’s notes on his collaborator’s ‘weakest book’ and ‘astonishingly bad’ work were sold at auction in 1890

‘Ha, ha, ha’: Mitt Romney laughs off Trump’s ‘total loser’ attack

Utah senator calls former president a ‘whack job’ after Trump called book ‘much like him – boring, horrible and predictable’

Thursday, October 26, 2023

David Shrigley turns 6,000 The Da Vinci Code novels into Nineteen Eighty-Four

Artist creates new edition of Orwell classic after Swansea charity shop had its fill of Dan Brown bestseller

Labour’s Rachel Reeves denies apparent plagiarism over her new book

Book on female economists has passages that appear to be lifted from Wikipedia and the Guardian, FT analysis finds

Bloomsbury boasts record first-half profits after fantasy fiction boom

Publisher to double shareholder payout as demand grows for books by Sarah J Maas and Samantha Shannon

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Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Scholastic reverses decision to separate books on race, gender and sexuality

After backlash, company will no longer separate catalog at school fairs, which allowed districts to opt out of diverse books

Most banned books in US prisons include Amy Schumer and Art of War

Latest banned books list comes amid increase in type of books being banned from prison system, PEN America says

Trump made crude Oval Office remark about fate of Kurds in Syria, book says

Ex-president interrupted briefing to ask why he should ‘give a fuck’ about Kurds amid US troop withdrawal, Adam Kinzinger writes

Chaucer goes digital as British Library makes works available online

Library photographs and uploads its entire collection of manuscripts by author of The Canterbury Tales

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Yuval Noah Harari backs critique of leftist ‘indifference’ to Hamas atrocities

Exclusive: Sapiens author among 90 signatories to statement of dismay at ‘extreme moral insensitivity’

Israel and Hamas at war – live updates

Penguin Random House launches high schoolers’ award to combat book bans

The publisher’s $10,000 Freedom of Expression prize invites teens to write about a banned book that changed their life, against a backdrop of rising censorship

Monday, October 23, 2023

Tian Yi wins 4thWrite prize for ‘fantastically original’ The Good Son

Award for short story about a young man reflecting on a small-town childhood includes publication on the Guardian website

Read Tian Yi’s The Good Son

Salman Rushdie: allow writers to create characters outside of their own experience

Booker prize-winning author said that if ‘only women can write about women and straight people about straight people’ then it signals the ‘death of art’

Friday, October 20, 2023

Britney Spears criticises ‘dumb and silly’ press coverage of her memoir

Singer says on social media that she didn’t mean ‘to offend anyone’ with her new tell-all book The Woman in Me

‘Smug’ Jared Kushner praised DeSantis’s Florida during Covid, Cuomo aide says

Top aide to then New York governor says Trump’s son-in-law called to stress contrast between two states during pandemic

Thursday, October 19, 2023

‘The potential to undermine democracy’: European publishing trade bodies call for action on generative AI

Three organisations argue that more transparency is needed after research found AI models have been trained using pirated works by authors such as Zadie Smith and Stephen King

Mitt Romney wanted to join Trump administration to ‘quell the chaos’, book says

In Romney: A Reckoning by McKay Coppins, the Utah senator recounts his brief flirtation with controlling US foreign affairs

‘Demand interestingness’: Thomas Heatherwick rails against boring buildings

Designer says soulless structures make people stressed and lonely as he launches book and campaign

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Scholastic to separate books on race, gender and sexuality for book fairs

Children’s book publisher will allow US districts to include or exclude separate list, a decision that has led to a backlash

‘Steve Bannon is watching us closely’: Naomi Klein on populists, conspiracists and real-world activism

Author speaks candidly about a ‘mirror world’ that feeds our anxieties, distorts reality and fuels the polarisation of society

Serena Williams to publish memoir about life ‘on and off the court’

The tennis champion has signed a two-book deal with Penguin Random House, saying it will be the first time she has paused and reflected on her remarkable career

Black headteachers in UK say pupils crying out for ‘people who look like them’

Letters To a Young Generation: Aspiring School Leaders book aims to encourage Black teachers to pursue leadership positions

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Most libraries to provide ‘warm banks’ again this winter

Library service schemes to offer free, heated space, which began last year in response to the cost of living crisis, will resume at the end of October

Malaysia pulls out of Frankfurt book fair, blaming organisation’s pro-Israel stance

Representatives of the south-east Asian country stated that the event, the world’s largest, has allied itself with Israel in its war with Hamas, after an award due to be presented to a Palestinian writer was cancelled

Monday, October 16, 2023

Bohdan Piasecki wins best performed poem in new Forward prize category

Piasecki’s ‘electric’ performance of Almost Certainly wins new award that recognises spoken word artists, while Malika Booker, Jason Allen-Paisant and Momtaza Mehri also scoop up prizes

Sunday, October 15, 2023

Palestinian voices ‘shut down’ at Frankfurt Book Fair, say authors

Open letter rebukes LitProm decision to cancel award ceremony for Adania Shibli due to ‘war started by Hamas’

Israel-Hamas war: latest news and live updates

Saturday, October 14, 2023

Reader, they lived there: campaign to save Brontës’ Bradford birthplace as it goes on sale

A crowdfunding drive led by TV presenter Christa Ackroyd aims to make the first home of the literary siblings a tourist destination and source of inspiration

Friday, October 13, 2023

Louise Glück, Nobel prize-winning poet, dies at 80

Pulitzer prize winner and former US poet laureate was known for her sharp, austere lyrical work

Batley library book-takers urged to return and help save building

Appeal follows emptying of shelves in apparent misunderstanding at ‘fill a bag with books for £1’ event

Authors join call for Baillie Gifford to divest from fossil fuel

More than 150 writers and industry professionals are asking the firm, which is a leading sponsor of UK literary festivals, to drop their investments

Thursday, October 12, 2023

Keith Giffen, comic book artist and writer, dies aged 70

Creator of Rocket Raccoon, star of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy movie series, and the DC superhero Blue Beetle died after suffering a stroke on Monday

‘Atrocious behaviour’: visitors accused of sabotaging Batley library £1 book sale

Volunteer says some people decided ‘all stock was available to take’ despite his protestations at West Yorkshire event

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Author Arundhati Roy may face prosecution in India over 2010 speech

Top official sanctions case against Booker prize-winning novelist for comments about Kashmir

Imprisoned Uyghur academic named 2023 PEN international writer of courage

Professor and global expert on Uyghur folklore Rahile Dawut was reportedly sentenced to life in prison after going missing six years ago

Spotify’s new audiobook streaming could have ‘devastating effect’, says Society of Authors

The industry body says the music giant’s move to make more than 150,000 titles available has not been discussed with authors and may compete with sales

Salman Rushdie announces memoir, Knife, about being stabbed in 2022

The author describes the book, subtitled Meditations After an Attempted Murder, as ‘a way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art’

Europe’s oldest student newspaper saved from closure

More than £3,000 raised to keep title founded by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1887 at Edinburgh going

Sonic Youth co-founder Thurston Moore cancels book tour, revealing ‘debilitating’ health condition

The 65-year-old musician says it was ‘utterly distressing’ to be told he shouldn’t travel after a longstanding but undisclosed illness recently escalated

Sunday, October 8, 2023

Music, history and courageous journalism: Baillie Gifford prize shortlist announced

Judges praise the final six ‘exquisite and ambitious’ works in contention for the £50,000 award for nonfiction

Sweden’s ‘queen of Noir’ Camilla Läckberg accused of using a ghostwriter

Crime novelist has been forced to deny claims that she tricked readers into buying books she didn’t write herself

Friday, October 6, 2023

Anthology of poems by van drivers celebrates life on the road

Nikki and Russell Eatly’s poem The Work Wife wins competition in Poetry in Motion collection

Thursday, October 5, 2023

Jon Fosse wins the 2023 Nobel prize in literature

The Norwegian author of novels, short stories and Pinteresque drama was praised by the judges for ‘giving voice to the unsayable’

• Follow our Nobel Prize live blog

Wednesday, October 4, 2023

A saint, a sinner and a sprog: Goldsmiths book prize shortlist announced

Six books are up for the award celebrating innovative fiction, including Benjamin Myers’ account of St Cuthbert and a ‘great trans novel’ set in a small northern town

Bob Mortimer and India Knight among Wodehouse fiction prize shortlistees

The comedian and the journalist join four others on the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse shortlist, which rewards witty writers with champagne and a pig named after their book

Chinese author Can Xue favourite to win 2023 Nobel prize for literature

Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie are also among those highly tipped for the prize, announced on Thursday

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

Ian McEwan criticises hiring of ‘sensitivity readers’ looking for offensive material in manuscripts

Booker-winning novelist describes the process of screening out things that might offend readers as ‘mass hysterias’ and ‘moral panics’ that ‘sweep through populations every now and then’’

Paul Harding and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah among National Book Award finalists

Winners from 25 finalists across fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature and young people’s literature will be announced in November

Sunday, October 1, 2023

Michael Mansfield KC: ‘The two-party system is a straitjacket’

The barrister famous for his work on landmark cases such as Grenfell, Stephen Lawrence and the Birmingham Six has written a book about fighting injustice

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Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Monday, October 30, 2023

Sunday, October 29, 2023

Friday, October 27, 2023

Thursday, October 26, 2023

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Monday, October 23, 2023

Friday, October 20, 2023

Thursday, October 19, 2023

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Monday, October 16, 2023

Sunday, October 15, 2023

Saturday, October 14, 2023

Friday, October 13, 2023

Thursday, October 12, 2023

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Sunday, October 8, 2023

Friday, October 6, 2023

Thursday, October 5, 2023

Wednesday, October 4, 2023

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

Monday, October 2, 2023

Sunday, October 1, 2023