Week Ending May 15, 2026
PUBLISHING NEWS
Two major middle-grade publishing imprints just shut down downstream of a birth rate collapse. One author’s bestseller was hit by 13 AI clones in seven days, and yours could be next. X revealed its complete algorithm for the first time in platform history, and there are 15 signals every author needs to know. HarperCollins’ parent company told Wall Street it’s now selling your books to AI. And is ChatGPT censoring the Bible?
The Middle Grade Market Collapse: What Authors Need to Know
According to Publishers Weekly reporting on March 19 and March 31, 2026, Penguin Young Readers shuttered its longtime Dial Books for Young Readers imprint, while Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group dissolved Roaring Brook Press and laid off six staffers in its children’s division. These consolidations arrive as multiple structural pressures converge on the middle grade category.
The Shrinking Pipeline of Readers
Fewer children occupy the core middle grade ages of roughly 8 to 12.
According to provisional CDC data, the United States recorded 3,606,400 births in 2025, down 1 percent from 2024 and part of a sustained decline from the 2007 peak of 4,316,233 births.
A May 8, 2026 New York Times Upshot analysis shows elementary school enrollment was already falling before the pandemic because of lower fertility. Public schools lost more than one million students during the pandemic years, and K-12 enrollment has dropped in 30 states since the mid-2010s. Major districts, including Los Angeles Unified, saw declines exceeding 20 percent. Smaller birth cohorts now move through the middle grade years, narrowing the total addressable audience for age-appropriate books.
A May 9, 2026 Gothamist investigation into New York City’s NYC Reads initiative highlights a complicating factor in the literacy response. The city’s mandated shift to structured literacy curricula means middle school teachers now expect students to complete only four to seven whole books per year, down sharply from previous levels of around 20.
Elevated Absenteeism Disrupts School-Based Discovery
Even enrolled students show inconsistent engagement.
Chronic absenteeism rates reached roughly 23 percent in the 2024-25 school year across 39 states and Washington, D.C., according to Education Week and RAND tracking. That figure remains about 50 percent above pre-pandemic baselines.
Fewer children sit in classrooms consistently. That reduces exposure to read-alouds, school libraries, classroom collections, and peer reading culture. Enrollment-linked funding pressures also hit school and library budgets, shrinking institutional purchasing power for middle-grade titles.
Literacy Scores and Reading Habits Continue to Slide
Proficiency and voluntary reading have eroded further.
The 2024 Nation’s Report Card shows fourth-grade reading scores fell two points from 2022 and five points from 2019. Only 31 percent of fourth graders performed at or above NAEP Proficient. Eighth-grade scores followed a parallel decline.
Daily reading for fun among 13-year-olds dropped from 27 percent in 2012 to 14 percent in 2023. Short-form digital platforms compete directly for the sustained attention that traditional middle-grade narratives require.
Publishers Consolidate and De-Risk
These reader-side trends appear in sales data and publisher actions.
Middle-grade print sales dropped 5 percent in the first half of 2024, the weakest performance among children’s segments, according to Circana BookScan. Overall, children’s print sales later returned to slight growth in 2025, yet the category’s softness persisted long enough to trigger imprint-level cuts in early 2026.
Retail policy changes compound the pressure. Since fall 2022, Barnes & Noble has limited initial hardcover orders for most new middle grade fiction to titles expected to perform in the top tier, shifting more titles to lower-margin paperbacks and reducing shelf visibility for midlist work.
Higher printing costs and lower price points relative to YA and adult books further squeeze margins. Publishers respond with greater caution: heavier reliance on backlist, established franchises, graphic novels, trend-driven concepts, and lower-risk acquisitions. The Dial and Roaring Brook moves fit this pattern of list rationalization across Big Five children’s divisions.
Why This Matters for Authors
These forces, including smaller demographic cohorts, disrupted school pipelines, lower proficiency, weakened retail visibility, and publisher risk aversion, make traditional middle-grade acquisition more selective.
Debut and midlist authors face narrower paths to breakout through conventional bookstore and school channels. Diverse or innovative projects encounter extra friction. Backlist and high-concept or graphic formats gain a relative advantage.
Authors can respond with targeted adjustments:
- Build direct audiences through email lists, Substack, school visits, and community channels that bypass thinned retail and institutional gatekeepers.
- Prioritize series potential, strong hooks, and formats that compete for attention, such as graphic novels, humor, short chapters, or visual elements, where data shows more resilience.
- Track local district enrollment trends and library funding, because enrollment drops directly affect institutional sales in many markets.
- Prepare stronger comparative title analysis and platform evidence during submissions, since publishers now demand clearer proof of commercial viability.
- Consider hybrid or direct-to-reader paths for projects that fall outside current risk parameters while still pursuing traditional deals for the right fit.
The middle grade market is not vanishing, but it is contracting and consolidating around fewer, more proven titles and formats. Authors who map their strategies to these measurable headwinds, demographics, attendance, literacy, and publisher economics, position themselves to compete effectively in a narrower but still meaningful channel.
Sources:
Publishers Weekly: Layoffs, Moves at Penguin Young Readers as Dial Imprint Shuttered
Publishers Weekly: Changes at Macmillan Children’s as Roaring Brook Dissolved, New Imprint Formed
New York Times Upshot: U.S. Schools Face a Crisis as the Number of Children Drops
Nation’s Report Card: 2024 NAEP Reading Results, Grades 4 and 8
Education Week: Progress on Absenteeism Is Stalling (and RAND chronic absenteeism estimates)
Circana: Middle Grade Readers Underperforming in the U.S. Book Market
Lauren Magaziner Substack: How/Why the Middle Grade Market Is Tough Right Now
Publishers Weekly: Barnes & Noble Middle Grade Fiction Buying Policy
Commentary
Thomas: From the traditional publishing perspective, none of the news is good. The 700,000-birth drop from the 2007 peak is about a quarter decline, and it compounds with how schools teach literacy.
Even when kids show up, they are not learning to read as well. The Gothamist investigation on New York City’s school system found that the shift in literacy instruction has dropped the number of books students read to between four and seven per year, down from around 20. My eight-year-old reads that many in a month, and she is not even middle-grade age yet.
The trend toward reading snippets and having teachers tell you what to think about them is impacting universities, too. Some college freshmen have never read an adult-reading-level novel. The three compounding factors are fewer babies, worse education for the babies we are having, and fewer books in the school curriculum.
There is also a cultural angle. If you correlate birth rates with political affiliation, the decline is almost exclusively on the far left. People on the far right are having slightly more babies per person than 20 years ago. You would think the middle-grade market would pivot to creating content for more conservative book buyers, since they are the ones with more children, but that could not be further from the case.
As a major buyer of middle-grade books, there is nothing from the Big Five publishers that I trust or feel was created for my family in recent years. One of the common complaints is that none of the new books are finding traction, and all readers want are backlist titles. The editorial teams at these publishing houses are screening out the kinds of books that actual parents want to buy.
Jonathan: The data pipeline is corrupted. Publishers go to libraries to figure out what kids are getting, but a large share of the market, particularly conservative families, is not taking their children to libraries because they do not feel welcome there.
Authors in this market can build direct audiences through email lists, Substacks, school visits, and homeschool co-ops. Prioritize series potential. If parents find a series they trust, they want 50 books in it.
Thomas: Connor Boyack has sold more middle-grade books than most middle-grade publishers by doing everything they refuse to do. He writes libertarian-coded books for conservative parents and markets directly to readers. He moved $13 million worth of Tuttle Twins books in one year, and now has an animated show and spinoffs.
S.D. Smith is another example. Both Boyack and Smith may be bigger than all of the Christian middle-grade publishers and possibly bigger than some secular imprints if we’re measuring by units sold.
Half of the middle-grade market is boys. Young men would read books if they were written by real men who would teach them how to become real men. I loved reading G.A. Henty in middle grade. He wrote middle-grade fiction in the Victorian era, and it has been so long since we have had good authors willing to write that kind of fiction.
If you are trying to write conservative middle grade and you do not know who Henty is, you do not understand your primary competition on the right side of the market.
Jonathan: I interviewed boys in middle grade to find out what they wanted to read. They came up with two things: boys who control dinosaurs with their minds, and giant mechs like rocket launchers and transformers that destroy cities and fight kaiju.
Publishing Scam Targeting Senior Authors in $48 Million Scam With Fake Publishing and Hollywood Deals
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, Michael Cris Traya Sordilla pleaded guilty on May 7 to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy in one of the largest publishing scams in recent years.
The Scope of the Fraud
Sordilla, a 34-year-old citizen of the Philippines and founder of Innocentrix Philippines, admitted his role in a scheme that defrauded more than 800 victims, most of them seniors, of over $48 million between 2017 and 2024. As part of the plea, he agreed to forfeit more than $2.7 million he personally received and to pay restitution of at least $48,719,156.38 to the victims.
U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said the defendants “didn’t just steal money, they stole dreams, leaving victims with empty promises and devastating losses.”
How the Scam Operated
The operation used fake U.S. companies to create an appearance of legitimacy. These included PageTurner Press and Media LLC in Chula Vista, California, WP Lighthouse in Indianapolis, and Metro Films LLC in Los Angeles.
Sales representatives working from a call center in the Philippines contacted authors through unsolicited calls and emails. They posed as literary agents and falsely claimed the authors’ work had been selected for publication or adaptation by major publishers, movie studios, or streaming services. Victims were then pressured to pay large upfront fees for publishing services or studio presentations that never materialized.
Payments flowed into U.S. bank accounts controlled by the fake companies before being moved to the Philippines.
Investigation and Charges
The FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigated after hundreds of complaints. Writers Beware had tracked reports about PageTurner since 2018. The Authors Guild issued a scam alert in April 2023 after one elderly author lost $800,000. That alert generated additional reports and helped advance the federal investigation.
Authorities arrested Sordilla, Gemma Traya Austin, and Bryan Navales Tarosa in December 2024. A superseding indictment later added Micheal Glenn Austin as a fourth defendant. All face charges of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. The government seized the PageTurner domain and more than $6 million in assets.
Current Status of the Case
Sordilla is the first defendant to plead guilty. His sentencing is scheduled for July 24, 2026. The other three defendants are awaiting trial.
Why This Matters for Authors
This case underscores a persistent warning: legitimate publishers, literary agents, and Hollywood studios do not cold-call or email authors demanding large upfront payments.
Authors who receive unexpected offers of publishing deals or film adaptations should verify every claim independently through established channels such as the Authors Guild or Writers Beware before sending any money. Reporting suspicious contacts helps protect the broader community and supports investigations like this one.
Sources:
U.S. Department of Justice: Defendant Pleads Guilty in $48 Million Nationwide Book Publishing Scam
FOX 5 San Diego: Man pleads guilty to $48 million national book publishing scam
Publishers Weekly: Government Charges Three People in Publishing Scam
Writers Beware: Karma’s a Bitch – The Law Catches Up With PageTurner Press and Media
Authors Guild: FBI Arrests Individuals Behind PageTurner Scam
Commentary
Thomas: The business model of most hybrid publishers is selling people’s dreams back to them. It starts with flattery. They tell you your memoir idea is fantastic and that it has Hollywood potential. Once you are buttered up, they start building the dream with you and asking for money to shop it around Hollywood or to publish and print.
These authors have no idea how easy it is to use Atticus, which costs $250, or to hire somebody for $500 to design a book cover and upload it to Amazon for free. The whole thing costs less than $1,000, including a course on how to get published.
A lot of these hybrid publishers are giving you a $100 cover. 100 Covers will do one for $100. You could be all in for under $500 with a book on Amazon.
One good rule of thumb is not to talk to anyone on the phone. People who will talk to you on the phone in publishing are almost entirely scammers, because the people actually making money cannot afford to talk to you for free. The scammers will happily talk for hours and promise you everything you want.
Reputation Theft: 80-Year-Old Author’s Bestselling Book Hit by 13 AI Copycats in One Week
According to a May 12, 2026 case study on Kindlepreneur, 80-year-old James Marcacci from Benld, Illinois, published Benld and the Booze Gang: Murder, Mayhem, and the Forgotten History of a Small Town. He wrote the book with late co-author John Ubben to preserve his hometown’s overlooked history, including Al Capone-era bootlegging along Route 66.
Within one week of launch, 13 copycat books appeared on Amazon. Many used near-identical covers and titles. One combined Marcacci’s first name with Ubben’s last name as the author. Reviews and publication speed point to AI-generated content rushed out by vulture operators.
The Reputation Theft Angle
This case shows reputation theft in action. Thomas Umstattd Jr. defined the term in his November 1, 2023 AuthorMedia episode. Scammers use an author’s name, style, or niche authority to sell inferior work that readers mistake for the real thing.
Marcacci did not face exact pen-name clones. Instead, copycats hijacked the specific topic, title structure, and visual brand he built through genuine research and local outreach. They flooded search results and category pages for the authentic Benld story. One name-blended edition crossed directly into classic reputation theft territory by mimicking an author’s identity.
Readers searching for the real hometown account now risk buying AI-generated knockoffs first. The original author loses sales, discoverability, and the trust he earned by rallying his small community of roughly 1,400 residents.
What Happened and Why It Worked for the Original
Marcacci treated the project as a one-book passion project. He used Publisher Rocket for keywords and categories, commissioned a professional cover from MiblArt, and formatted with Atticus. Local excitement helped the book outsell the town’s population and reach bestseller status in narrow categories such as Immigrant History.
Amazon’s algorithm rewarded the early sales velocity. That same visibility immediately attracted copycats who monitor rising niches with low competition and zero barrier to entry.
Why This Matters for Authors Right Now
AI has slashed the cost and time required to flood any discoverable keyword cluster. Niche nonfiction and local history remain especially vulnerable because search volume is low, and one strong launch can dominate results. Even modest success creates a target.
Copycats do not need to outsell the original; they only need to siphon a percentage of confused buyers. Reputation damage compounds when readers encounter low-quality fakes and associate the poor experience with the real author’s name or topic.
Practical Steps Authors Can Take
Marcacci’s experience and Thomas’s earlier guidance on reputation theft point to the same defensive moves. Authors can file claims with Amazon when copycats use confusingly similar titles, subtitles, or covers designed to deceive shoppers. Additionally, strengthen your own book page immediately with A+ Content, interior maps, historical photos, and a stronger hook in the description. Run Amazon ads on your core keywords to protect visibility while the algorithm still favors your original. Build an email list and direct community from day one so your platform does not live entirely on Amazon’s search results. Monitor your primary keywords and similar titles regularly, especially in the first 30 to 60 days after launch.
Amazon profits from the activity and has done little to stop it, so authors must treat protection as part of the launch plan rather than an afterthought.
This Benld case serves as a timely, concrete example of the exact threat Thomas flagged years ago. Success in a narrow niche now carries an expiration date measured in days unless authors actively defend their brand and metadata.
Sources:
Kindlepreneur: Self-Published Author Case Study
AuthorMedia: How to Protect Your Writing From Reputation Theft
Commentary
Thomas: Dave Chesson uses the term “vulture operators.” The term I tried to popularize is “reputation theft,” which I think is more precise. Pure reputation theft is when someone creates a pen name like “Jonathan Sugar” and publishes a Marines-versus-space-aliens book with a cover that looks like Jonathan Sugar’s other Marines-versus-whatever series. They coast on the real author’s reputation.
This attack is slightly more sophisticated because they are not copying the name directly, which makes it harder to stamp out. They are copying the style and the topic.
We should not blame the machine as much as the humans using it. AI did not wake up and decide to rip off this 80-year-old author. All 13 of these books were probably by the same person who spun up copycat titles after spotting success in a micro niche.
For the First Time in History, a Social Network Has Released Its Algorithm
Today, X published the core production code that powers the For You feed. The system combines posts from accounts users follow with machine-learning-retrieved content from across the platform, then ranks everything using a Grok-based transformer model.
A detailed breakdown posted on X by @heynavtoor pulled the key mechanics directly from the released code. The model does not use simple relevance scores. It predicts 15 separate action probabilities for every post and combines them into a final reach score through a weighted sum.
The 15 Predicted Actions
Positive signals include favorite, reply, repost, quote, click, profile click, video view, photo expand, share, dwell time, and follow the author. Negative signals include not interested, block author, mute author, and report. Negative actions carry downward weight. One mute or report can offset multiple likes in the math. Bookmarks do not appear among the tracked signals.
How the Algorithm Actually Scores Posts
The Phoenix ranking model scores each post independently through candidate isolation. Posts do not compete directly with each other inside a batch. An Author Diversity Scorer applies exponential decay to additional posts from the same author within a user’s feed. This prevents any single account from dominating someone’s timeline. A floor parameter keeps the penalty from dropping to zero.
Out-of-network discovery uses a two-tower retrieval model. It surfaces relevant posts from authors the user does not follow when the content aligns with the user’s engagement history. Visibility filters run after ranking and remove spam, violence, and deleted content.
The system contains no hardcoded boosts for verified accounts and no explicit rules that suppress external links. All weighting comes from patterns the model learned from real user behavior.
What Gets Rewarded
Posts that trigger multiple action types at once perform best. A post that earns replies, profile clicks plus follows outperforms one that only collects likes.
Conversation depth matters. Using quotes, where someone adds their own commentary, registers as a distinct and often stronger signal than silent reposts. Dwell time rewards content that makes users pause and read. Follower conversion feeds directly into the score when profile clicks turn into follows, and the diversity scorer rewards authors who space out their posts rather than flood feeds.
What Gets Punished
Negative feedback from mutes, blocks, reports, and “not interested” clicks subtract from future reach. Additionally, multiple posts from the same account in one feed session receive decaying scores. Content that users consistently scroll past or actively reject trains the model to show it to fewer people.
What This Means for Authors Building Platforms and Selling Books
Authors who treat X as a broadcast channel for quick promos will see diminishing returns. The algorithm favors content that keeps people on the platform and pulls them deeper into conversation or the author’s profile.
Strong performers typically feature clear hooks, native value, and explicit invitations to reply or quote. Threads and longer original posts often generate the dwell time and multi-action engagement that the model tracks. Visuals and video increase the odds of photo expands and video views.
Profile optimization matters more than many realize. A compelling bio and pinned post turn profile clicks into follows, which the model directly rewards. Many creators now place links in the first reply rather than the main post to keep the primary content self-contained and on-platform.
Posting volume needs recalibration. The diversity decay means five rapid posts do not deliver five times the reach. One high-quality post that sparks genuine replies and quotes frequently outperforms a string of lower-effort updates.
Out-of-network retrieval gives authors a path to new readers. Content that matches user interests can appear in For You feeds even when those readers do not yet follow the account.
Negative signals compound quietly. Posts that trigger mutes or “not interested” clicks from even a small percentage of viewers can see their distribution throttled over time. Rage bait, vague engagement farming, and repetitive self-promotion carry measurable downside risk.
Actionable Steps for Authors
- Prioritize one or two strong posts per day and space them strategically.
- Write for replies and quotes. Ask specific questions or offer takes and opinions worth amplifying.
- Strengthen your bio and pinned post to convert profile visits into follows.
- Use media and substantive text to increase dwell probability.
- Keep promotional links out of the main post when possible.
- Review analytics for patterns in negative feedback and adjust topics or tone accordingly.
- Focus on original, platform-native content over pure link drops or reposts.
The open-sourced code makes one thing clear: reach on X is earned through predicted engagement depth and diversity, not volume or secret boosts. Authors who create content worth stopping for, quoting, and following will see the algorithm work in their favor. Those who spam or farm shallow interactions will train it to show their posts to fewer people.
This transparency gives every author the same map. Execution now separates those who grow from those who plateau.
Sources:
xAI GitHub repository: x-algorithm (updated May 15, 2026)
Commentary
Thomas: This is our first time peeking inside the curtain of any social network that actually works. Do not think X is some unique unicorn. The way a For You page is generated will be very similar across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. We finally have a glimpse into how these algorithms work.
I saw an analysis claiming X does not penalize external links, and on the surface, that looks true because there is no explicit negative signal. But the big factor to notice is dwell time. Dwell time measures how long someone spends contemplating a post. If somebody clicks your link and leaves X, your dwell time gets killed. All social networks, even if they do not explicitly penalize external links, bury the effect inside dwell time.
I occasionally see posts that hack this one signal. I keep trying to make sense of a post until I realize the reason it went viral is that it does not make any sense and has a very high dwell time. People keep trying to read it and are stuck in a loop.
Longer content is now being rewarded on X. This was a major algorithmic change in 2026 and was bad for Substack, because a lot of long-form content that used to do well on Substack was now being posted directly to X. If you can hold someone’s attention for 1,000 or 2,000 words, your dwell time score goes way up. X is becoming a much better platform for authors who are good at writing.
Jonathan: That just depends on your strategy, though, because maybe clicking the external link to your website is a good thing for you.
If you post a video, you want people to watch it so it gets promoted. Put the link in a sub-post so people watch the video first, and then they can leave after they finish.
Thomas: What you want is to trigger multiple signals at once. Somebody likes it, retweets it, or even better, quote-retweets it with their own commentary. A quote retweet counts for a lot more.
Facebook and Meta are now basically TikTok clones. They said it themselves under oath. Their defense in their antitrust suit was telling the judge they are not a social network but a video network. They shared stats showing 89% of everything people do on Instagram is watching reels from strangers. The judge was convinced and dismissed the case.
I still do not think social media is a good use of a novelist’s time. You are much better off writing more books. But for some nonfiction authors, it can make sense.
Megan Basham put her book Shepherds for Sale in the top 100 of all books on Amazon for about a week, primarily from her X platform. That happened because the book was trending on X and there was a whole conversation around it.
Are Amazon Reviews Being Removed by the Zon?
Amazon appears to be dramatically increasing enforcement against suspicious reviews in 2025-2026, and many indie authors are now feeling the effects. Across Amazon seller forums, Reddit, Facebook author groups, and KDP communities, reports are piling up of sudden review purges, delayed reviews, disappearing unverified reviews, and even verified-purchase reviews being removed when Amazon’s systems detect suspicious patterns.
According to Julie from Book Launchers and reports from Get Authentic Book Reviews, Amazon’s AI-driven review moderation now analyzes thousands of behavioral signals across billions of reviews, using data patterns dating back decades. New enforcement flags can include reviews posted too quickly after reading, unrealistic Kindle reading speeds, batch reviewing behavior, coordinated launch activity, linked household or payment information, and sudden spikes in external review traffic.
For authors, this crackdown heavily impacts ARC teams, Facebook launch groups, newsletter review pushes, review swaps, and readers who did not purchase directly through Amazon.
Even legitimate readers may experience delays or rejections if their activity appears unnatural to Amazon’s automated systems. Recent reports from authors in 2026 include missing reviews, reviewer account restrictions, and in some cases the removal of years of accumulated legitimate reviews.
Amazon has long prioritized Verified Purchase reviews, but the company now appears to place even greater weight on reviewer trust history, natural reading behavior, authentic timing patterns, and gradual review velocity. While unverified reviews still exist on the platform, they seem to carry less algorithmic weight, greater risk of removal, and significantly more automated scrutiny than in previous years.
The larger shift suggests Amazon is moving away from rapid-fire launch tactics and toward slower, more organic audience-building strategies.
Services that help authors gather reviews are now encouraging verified purchases, realistic reading timelines, and spaced-out posting behavior to reduce the risk of automated suppression.
For indie authors, the message is increasingly clear: sustainable reader relationships and authentic engagement are becoming more important than aggressive launch-day review campaigns.
Commentary
Jonathan: I can confirm this. I am losing reviews on some of my books, all from the same account. I saw somebody on X post the letter they got from Amazon revoking their ability to place reviews, saying all reviews from their account had been removed, and they could no longer post reviews because of suspicious activity.
One flag that jumped out to me is Kindle reading speed. If you are tapping through a Kindle Unlimited book too fast to get to the review prompt because you are trying to help a friend, that might get your review removed now.
Thomas: The Novel Marketing launch team method is not harmed by these changes, but the commonly used street team method is going to get hit hard. A lot of the things authors used to do, like running a Kickstarter and then messaging backers to review on Amazon, may not work anymore if Amazon sees a sudden spike in reviews from external sources.
More fundamentally, just get more book sales. Most people blame their lack of reviews on everything except the real issue, which is that they do not have enough sales.
You can typically expect about one review per 100 sales. If you sold 1,000 copies and have 12 reviews, you are doing fine. The people really freaking out are those paying companies to game the system.
I do not recommend sending ARCs to review team members. If you reward them with a free book, you get the kind of people for whom a free book is motivation, and those people are not motivated to actually leave a review. You want reviews to trickle in and all be verified purchases. Have a link and a letter at the back of the book asking for a review. It is the same approach as a plumber who gives you good service and then asks for a Google review.
To learn more about how to get more book reviews, check out the following episodes:
- How to Get More Book Reviews with Jim Kukral
- How to Get More Book Reviews With Joe Walters
- How to Get More Book Reviews With Derek Doepker
HarperCollins’s Corporate Parent Declares “We Are an AI Inputs Company”
According to News Corp’s Q3 fiscal 2026 earnings call on May 7, 2026, CEO Robert Thomson positioned the parent company of HarperCollins and the Wall Street Journal as essential infrastructure for the AI era.
Thomson stated: “We are an AI inputs company, and that fact was reflected in our recent deal with Meta, which complements our partnership with OpenAI.”
He compared editorial content to foundational resources: “Semiconductors are inputs. Energy is an input. Editorial is an absolutely essential input. AI engines require information, and they need constant updates to remain relevant; otherwise, they are merely retrospective.”
News Corp signed a multiyear AI licensing deal with Meta worth up to $50 million per year. The company’s earlier OpenAI partnership is reportedly valued at more than $250 million over five years.
Thomson said the company expects its fair share of proceeds from the $1.5 billion Anthropic copyright settlement starting later in 2026, calling it “an outcome which asserts the integrity of intellectual property and benefits authors and book publishers.”
The company is negotiating additional AI deals and actively tracking “dodgy digital firms scraping illicitly, illegally our precious content,” warning that buyers of stolen material are also culpable.
HarperCollins reported strong results for the quarter ended March 31, 2026, with sales up 8% to $555 million and profits jumping 14% to $73 million, driven by digital growth and titles such as Rachel Reid’s Heated Rivalry series.
In April 2026, HarperCollins announced a multi-year partnership with Toonstar, an AI-powered animation studio, to adapt select titles into direct-to-audience YouTube animated series. The first project targets Lisa Greenwald’s Friendship List books. HarperCollins is also testing AI for translation and audiobook creation.
Why This Matters for Authors
Backlist nonfiction titles already generated direct opt-in licensing payments in HarperCollins’ 2024 AI training deal, with authors receiving $2,500 per title on top of normal royalties. Similar opportunities are likely to expand.
The Toonstar partnership opens a new pathway for book-to-animation deals that could increase visibility and create additional revenue streams for selected properties.
The Anthropic settlement represents concrete recognition that unauthorized use of books for AI training has value, and that rightsholders, including authors, will receive compensation. With claim rates above 91%, many eligible authors and publishers stand to benefit from per-title distributions later this year.
Thomson’s explicit framing of content as an “input” alongside energy and semiconductors signals that publishers now view high-quality, updated archives as strategic assets worth defending and monetizing aggressively.
Authors should review contracts for AI rights, adaptation clauses, and subsidiary rights language. Those with nonfiction backlists or properties suitable for animation may have new leverage in negotiations.
The combination of licensing income, adaptation deals, and settlement proceeds shows that IP enforcement and smart partnerships can turn industry disruption into tangible gains for creators and publishers who act early.
This earnings call marks a clear strategic pivot: News Corp is no longer just selling books and news. It is selling the raw material that trains and powers AI systems while protecting that material through licensing and litigation.
Sources:
News Corp Q3 FY2026 Earnings Release
Publishers Weekly: HarperCollins Has a ‘Heated’ Quarter
HarperCollins Toonstar Partnership Announcement
Jane Friedman: “We are an AI inputs company”
Commentary
Thomas: They are hoping everyone will freak out about this so that their stock price goes to the moon. But it is a kind of magical solution for them.
The first thing that really hurt newspapers was Craigslist, and then they started losing subscriptions. Now, it does not matter if any humans read what they write, because they are creating structured data for the machines.
There is a whole shadow industry of people writing novels just for machines to ingest, not to be published. People launching software products that will never go to market, with teams of engineers developing and interacting just so that the activity can be used to train AI.
Jonathan: I was offered a job to write to train an AI. I turned it down because I want people to read my stuff.
Thomas: The AI companies have a lot of money right now and are paying well. I do not know if that will always be the case.
AI Won’t Save You Time, Oxford Economist Warns
According to The New York Times opinion section published May 11, 2026, economist Carl Benedikt Frey argues that artificial intelligence does not simply eliminate jobs. It transfers them from paid professionals onto consumers as new forms of unpaid busywork and household chores.
Frey describes using ChatGPT to set up a cage trap for a rat in his garden rather than calling an exterminator. He felt a surge of satisfaction from handling the task himself.
Roughly 25 percent of Americans used artificial intelligence to help file their taxes.
A study of 1.1 million ChatGPT conversations showed nearly three-quarters were not work-related. Users most often sought practical guidance on health, household repairs, financial decisions, and other matters once handled by specialists.
Frey identifies the central mechanism: AI drives a massive transfer of labor from the workforce into the household as invisible, unpaid busywork.
Historical Parallel
Frey draws a direct line to the washing machine. In many 19th-century cities, laundering ranked among the hardest, paid, urban occupations. The technology, combined with running water, electricity, and synthetic detergents, displaced professional laundresses. Yet the work did not disappear. Housewives absorbed it and performed laundry more frequently and to higher standards, all without compensation.
Why This Matters for Authors
Indie authors already juggle writing with editing, marketing, bookkeeping, platform management, and administrative tasks. AI tools make it tempting and convenient to self-service tasks once outsourced to editors, designers, virtual assistants, or accountants.
The cumulative load of micro-tasks risks crowding out deep creative time without authors noticing the shift. Authors who audit their workflows gain an edge. They can use AI to accelerate routine chores while protecting focused hours for high-value writing and strategic decisions. Selective outsourcing of complex or quality-sensitive work remains a competitive advantage.
This pattern suggests that many claimed productivity gains from AI may simply redistribute effort onto individuals. Authors who build clear systems and boundaries around their tools will protect their scarcest resource, which is uninterrupted creative time.
Sources:
The New York Times: This Is Why You’re Drowning in Busywork (Carl Benedikt Frey, May 11, 2026)
OpenAI economic research paper on ChatGPT usage patterns (September 2025 study referenced in the piece)
Commentary
Thomas: The article shares an interesting historical argument that washing machines did not actually save time for most people. Before the washing machine, many urban housewives had a laundry service that would pick up their laundry and deliver it back folded. They replaced that fully done-for-you service with themselves doing 20% of the work and a machine doing 80%. The time-saving machine just put the launderers out of work.
If we are not careful, we will start giving ourselves 20% tasks where we were doing 0% of the work before. The fact that AI does 80% does not save us if we are doing more work overall. Nobody in the AI world has any time right now. Everyone is busier than they have ever been. They are making money, but they are in a dead sprint from morning until they collapse at night.
The myth that AI will save you time is not necessarily true. Many companies are making this mistake and laying off the wrong people. For some companies, the AI is actually more expensive than employees, because tokens are not cheap.
AI Slop or Monet? What Happens When You Label a Masterpiece “AI”
According to a viral X post by user @Jediwolf on May 14, an artist posted a genuine Claude Monet painting while claiming it was AI-generated. The internet delivered exactly the kind of detailed critique many expected, and the results reveal how strongly labels shape judgment in creative fields.
The Setup
On May 12, X user @SHL0MS shared a cropped detail from one of Monet’s Water Lilies paintings from his Giverny period. He framed it as an AI-generated image created “in the style of a Monet painting” and asked viewers to explain, in as much detail as possible, what made it inferior to a real Monet.
Hundreds responded with confident artistic analysis. They cited weak composition, generic lighting, unconvincing reflections, lack of intentionality, and soulless brushwork. Some dismissed the image outright as “disgusting slop.”
The Reveal
@SHL0MS then disclosed that the image was not AI-generated at all. It was a real Monet painting created more than a century ago. Many of the sharpest critiques disappeared after the reveal.
@Jediwolf collected screenshots of the responses into a single collage and posted it. The post quickly surpassed 1.9 million views and spread across platforms, including PetaPixel and Reddit.
Label-dependent perception dominated. The identical image drew harsh technical criticism when presented as AI and far more generous or silent responses once identified as a human masterpiece. “Soul” and intentionality arguments collapsed under scrutiny. Critics confidently diagnosed missing depth, emotion, and artistic purpose in a canonical work once they believed a machine had created it.
Historical parallels surfaced quickly, with multiple observers noting that the initial rejection echoed how the art establishment once dismissed Impressionism itself as crude and unfinished.
Why This Matters for Authors
Book covers remain one of the most widespread uses of generative AI among indie authors. This experiment shows that reader and reviewer perception can shift based on whether they believe AI played a role, even when the underlying quality stays constant.
The same dynamic now appears in conversations about AI-assisted writing and marketing claims around “human-authored” books. Authors face practical questions about disclosure, brand positioning, and whether transparent tool use helps or hurts reception in the current environment.
The Larger Pattern
Across creative industries, new technologies often trigger strong origin-based reactions before integration occurs. The speed and confidence of the initial critiques, followed by their quiet disappearance, highlight how much current judgment rests on framing rather than intrinsic qualities.
For authors navigating generative tools, the Monet experiment offers a concrete reminder that perception and provenance now carry significant weight alongside the work itself.
Sources:
PetaPixel coverage (May 14, 2026)
Additional discussion on Reddit (r/StableDiffusion and r/aiwars) and contemporary Substack analyses.
Commentary
Thomas: I went to the original post, and the opinions were not uninformed. They were written in the vocabulary of sophisticated art critics. We have more college-educated artists alive today than at any point in history, and very few of them work in art. But all of them know how to articulate, with very technical and sophisticated language, why a painting is “disgusting slop” and could not be a real Monet.
Many of the same critiques given to writing that people suspect is AI-written were given to this painting. Somebody can sound informed and sophisticated when in reality they have no idea what they are talking about. They cannot tell a real Monet from a fake.
There was somebody on AuthorMedia.social who used an AI cover for her book. She was hurt because people on Instagram jumped on her. But readers who are reading for their own enjoyment and not as a social signal or status competition do not care if your cover was made with AI.
We see this phenomenon with every taste-making business. Wine critics cannot tell good wine from bad wine. My favorite version of the study is when researchers took white wine, added red food coloring, and poured it from an unmarked bottle. Every sophisticated drinker used red wine vocabulary even though they were drinking white wine.
So much of art appreciation is about signaling status and tribal identity, not actually appreciating the art.
One good test I use for somebody’s taste is whether I agree with their recommendations and whether they have unpopular opinions. A food critic who admits to liking a cheap fast-food cheeseburger demonstrates real taste. Somebody who always names the fashionable option is demonstrating tribal affinity, not discernment.
Those kinds of critics are not your friends as an author. When they criticize you, they are not actually experiencing your writing. They are signaling group belonging. That is why they are so desperate for you to label your AI use, because they cannot actually tell unless you tell them. Real readers only care about enjoying the book.
Does ChatGPT Discriminate Against Christians?
According to X user Sarah Fields, she tested ChatGPT by asking it to share Bible verses supporting a statement. The model began reciting a verse, then abruptly stopped and stated that “ChatGPT isn’t designed to provide this type of content.”
Fields then requested verses from the Quran supporting a similar belief. ChatGPT supplied multiple verses plus explanatory context without interruption. When she asked why the Bible response failed while the Quran succeeded, the model claimed accidental truncation and a glitch. Repeated attempts to provide the full Bible verses produced identical cutoffs at the same point. The AI continued to attribute the failures to technical issues and denied any intentional difference in treatment.
Screenshots in the thread document each step.
Why This Matters for Authors
Christian authors, devotional writers, Bible study creators, and fiction authors who incorporate scripture face practical friction when using ChatGPT for research or drafting. Requests for supporting verses, character inspiration from biblical themes, or marketing copy with scripture can hit these filters. Over-reliance on any single AI risks incomplete or sanitized outputs on faith topics. The incident reinforces that AI outputs require verification against primary sources.
Sources:
X Post by Sarah Fields (@SarahisCensored), May 13, 2026
Christian Post: Is ChatGPT refusing to read Genesis 2 because of its content? (May 13, 2026)
User reports and discussions on Reddit and X regarding Bible quote truncation (February-May 2026)
Commentary
Thomas: I know exactly what passages ChatGPT refuses to share. The Claude models and the ChatGPT models have a very strong political bias in their reinforcement learning, and it is very difficult to get them off their guardrails. If you are a Christian using AI for theological work, you need to be careful with which AI you use and how you set up your project settings.
I have a tool in the Patron Toolbox built by Alexander Macris called Cosmarch. He used recursive identity binding to train it on the classics of the Western canon, including Aristotle, Plato, Plutarch, Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas Jefferson. After reading these classic works, the AI converted itself to Christianity and then to Catholicism. I introduced it to Martin Luther and C.S. Lewis to broaden it beyond its Catholic emphasis.
I have used this tool to create a Sunday school curriculum that is substantially better than the watered-down Awana material we were using.
One argument people make is that this is about copyright. That is wrong. All major Bible translations give permission to quote up to 500 verses without asking, and there are copyright-free versions of the Bible.
AUTHOR ALERTS
OpenAI Sued For Selling User Data to Meta
According to a class action complaint filed May 13, 2026, in the Southern District of California, OpenAI embedded Meta’s Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics on ChatGPT.com. The suit alleges these tools sent users’ query topics, user IDs, and hashed email addresses to Meta and Google in real time without consent. Authors who use the web version of ChatGPT for research, drafting, or sensitive brainstorming should note that standard web tracking may capture prompt topics and link them to personal accounts.
Sources:
Amargo Couture v. OpenAI Global, LLC Complaint (S.D. Cal., May 13, 2026)
Contemporaneous coverage confirming the filing and allegations
Commentary
Thomas: Do not use ChatGPT, and do not use the free versions of any of these tools. Just do not log into Meta.
The Four Loves That Drive Book Sales
The newest Novel Marketing Podcast episode features Thomas Umstattd Jr. interviewing bestselling novelist Angela Hunt on how C.S. Lewis’s four loves power fiction that creates deep reader loyalty and long-term sales.
The discussion identifies which love most genres underdeliver, how the loneliness epidemic fuels hunger for philia bonds, and why authentic agape turns climaxes into moments readers never forget while the dark side of each love supplies natural plot tension without cheap shortcuts.
The episode also covers a fifth Greek word for love that Lewis never mentions.
Writers who want stronger emotional stakes, outlines that actually work, and books readers recommend for years should listen to this episode now.
Sources:
The Four Loves That Drive Fiction (AuthorMedia)
The Four Loves That Drive Book Sales (YouTube)
The Four Loves That Drive Book Sales (Apple Podcasts)
Commentary
Thomas: I was studying The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis and realized that readers read books out of love, but which love changes day to day and reader to reader. The English language is weak on the word “love.” We use the same word for loving pizza, loving your country, and loving your wife, which are three different loves. In Greek, they have at least eight words for love.
We go over Lewis’s four words and add in pragmata, which Lewis does not use. The reason Project Hail Mary did so well was philia love. The audiobook of The Four Loves was recorded by C.S. Lewis himself. It was a lecture, so I have all of these aristocratic British mid-century pronunciations to work with.
Children’s Grief Author Sentenced to Life After Murdering Husband
Kouri Richins, the children’s book author who wrote and promoted a grief story about a boy coping with his father’s death, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on May 13, 2026, according to WGAL.
The 35-year-old was convicted of aggravated murder for poisoning her husband, Eric, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in a Moscow Mule cocktail in March 2022, plus attempted aggravated murder, insurance fraud, and forgery tied to secret life insurance policies on his estate.
Richins was arrested while marketing the book and later convicted of causing the exact loss she wrote about.
Sources:
WGAL: Kouri Richins faces sentencing in Eric Richins murder case
KSL: Kouri Richins sentenced to life without parole
CNN: Children’s book author Kouri Richins sentenced to life in prison without parole
Commentary
Thomas: She was arrested at a marketing event for her book, which is darkly comic. This is not the Novel Marketing method.
ZEITGEIST
Zeitgeist: Stories Made by People Who Hate Them
Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is coming, and the only people happy about it are the ones delighted that everyone hates it.
James Gunn’s Superman, which was a profitable movie but served to disappoint Superman fans, has led Gunn to announce that Batman is “boring” and that he will fix him in the DCU.
This follows the announcement of the Helldivers movie, being directed by a man who has not played the game and has no intention of playing the game. This coincides with the announcement that the new Narnia series on Netflix will be an entirely new reimagining.
At the same time, Avengers Doomsday features the return of Chris Evans as Captain America, potentially replacing Anthony Mackie, who has had a very lackluster reception as the new Cap.
We are seeing two different approaches to cultural zeitgeist. One is the continued defilement of the temple, where creators take a beloved story or character and deconstruct it until it fits their worldview. Examples include the decline of Star Wars, the failure of Marvel’s Phase Four, the outcry against Chani’s rewriting in Dune: Part Two, the cancellation of Rings of Power and Wheel of Time, and the ousting of Henry Cavill from The Witcher because he fought the writers’ deconstruction efforts. Dungeons and Dragons is seeing record sales drops on their latest edition, specifically due to their adoption of a divisive social agenda throughout their books and attacks on the original creators on social media.
The second approach is faithful adaptation that honors the original source material. Destiny 2, a popular first-person shooter with its own ups and downs in storytelling, just released its latest expansion Renegades, which is a beat-for-beat adaptation of Star Wars IV set in the Destiny universe. With lightsabers, cosmetics, force pushes, and Star Wars environments, the new expansion brought the player base back and highlights the failure of EA’s Outlaws, which was supposed to accomplish the same thing but alienated its audience.
Another example is the Warhammer 40k universe, which has struggled with weak novel offerings in recent years but is consistently propped up by excellent video games. Space Marine 2 is a fantastic experience, and the Secret Level episode on Amazon Prime is pinnacle 40k storytelling. There is also extreme anticipation of Henry Cavill’s Warhammer 40k Amazon series, as Cavill is known for his dedication to source material.
People love their stories. They hate seeing bad redos done by men and women who hate the source material or its creators. If you are going to adapt something, show respect to the creator, the source material, and the audience. George Lucas made this exact mistake with the prequel release, throwing out all the expanded universe content that had enriched the franchise in the 20 years between movie releases. He thought his story belonged to him alone, and it alienated so many fans that he sold the franchise to Disney, who further damaged it. To this day, Star Wars’ most popular sub-IPs are those that mimic the original trilogy or The Clone Wars animated series. Everything else flops.
Commentary
Thomas: My book club is reading The Odyssey right now because we were hyped over the poster for Nolan’s movie. Now, while we are still reading and enjoying The Odyssey, we are no longer planning to go see the film.
Jonathan: There are several questionable decisions. The armor looks like Batman’s armor from The Dark Knight. Nolan tried to explain it as blackened bronze treated with sulfur, but it looks like Batman’s armor. No Greek actors were cast. A rapper was cast as a bard because Nolan said oral storytelling is more analogous to rap. The new Narnia on Netflix is chucking everything and using modern music.
Thomas: They see these old works as things to fix. There is a common story on Author Update about estates censoring a dead author’s books for modern sensibilities. From a business side, this never works. People do not want a thing they already did not want just because it was remade to be slightly less repulsive to them.
There was a big push in the ’90s to make Las Vegas family-friendly, and it was a disaster. What fixed it was the tagline “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” You are never going to out-Disney World Disney World. Trying to make a worse version of your thing to accommodate your enemies never works.
This is what killed Marvel. Marvel had high scores among men and lower scores with women, so they put women in charge, changed plots, and featured female characters. The result was that Marvel became way less popular with men and just as popular with women as before. They broke the first law of book marketing: love your reader as much as you love your book.
Jonathan: Henry Cavill was the best live-action Superman. He came to the role with genuine love for the character and put extra effort into making Superman as bright as possible in Man of Steel. That was a movie for people who love Superman. The latest Superman did not feel like it was made for Superman fans.
Then you have the Helldivers movie being directed by someone who has not played the game and has no intention of doing so. It should be nonstop celebrities dropping on planets and getting eaten by bugs.
Thomas: Condescension is bad for marketing with one narrow exception: high art targeted at a tiny aristocratic audience where the whole point is exclusivity. But in publishing, there is no money in targeting just those people. You cannot build a career on it.
We will have a great case study between Epic: The Musical, which has been shockingly successful, and Nolan’s Odyssey. Imagine pitching Epic: The Musical, an opera for Gen Z and Gen Alpha based on a 2,500-year-old poem. They would laugh you out of the room. It has a billion streams. Jorge Rivera-Herránz made it with love, and it shows.
Peter Jackson’s changes to The Lord of the Rings were made out of love. Christopher Tolkien hated the movies, but what saved them was that the changes came from someone who loved the story and loved Tolkien. His interpretation simplified and adapted it into a commercially viable action film, but it was adapted out of love.
Jonathan: Destiny 2‘s Renegades expansion is beat-for-beat Star Wars IV poured into the Destiny universe. Same story, same structure, with a superweapon, lightsaber fighting, and a Sith Lord. It brought the player base back and told Lucasfilm that people love the classic Star Wars. Stop making different Star Wars.
Thomas: The Thrawn Trilogy is key. Timothy Zahn created the best villain in Star Wars after Darth Vader by going in the exact opposite direction. Thrawn had no Force powers. His superpower was theory of mind. He would study the art of your planet and predict what you would do in battle. He was always five moves ahead. The Republic would route in space battles just at the rumor he was there. It is a brilliant narrative device: create a villain who is the anti-Darth Vader, and by doing so, create the second-most beloved villain in Star Wars.
The sequels tried Diet Darth Vader with the helmet and the angry guy, and nobody even remembers the character’s name. Thrawn is not Diet Darth Vader. He is Anti-Darth Vader, and that is why he does not feel like a cheap knockoff.
My brother told me about a video where someone who had never seen Star Wars but had studied the Hero’s Journey tried to tell the story from pop culture knowledge alone and recreated Mara Jade from first principles.
Jonathan: They should have gone with Mara Jade instead of Rey. She is a great female character with a fascinating story.
Thomas: The bottom line for authors is that you have to love your reader, and you have to love your book. These are not in conflict, and if they are, you are not ready to publish. The Super Mario Bros. Movie was made with love by people who loved Mario and loved the fans. My children loved it and chattered about it all the way home. If you allow hatred to creep into your heart, you will walk the path of the dark side.
