With a TikTok ban on the horizon, publishers and authors are wondering what new platforms might replace the community of followers and digital creators on BookTok, Alexandra Alter reports for the New York Times. Writers, presses, and booksellers have grown increasingly reliant on TikTok to drive sales. Bookstores and other retailers have made physical and online displays of books trending on TikTok, and “in some ways,” Alter writes, the platform “democratized book marketing, giving readers as much or more influence as traditional gatekeepers.”

Like many other public libraries across the United States, Alpena Public Library in northern Michigan has found itself embroiled in debates around book banning, Book Riot reports. In March 2024, a petition circulated in the community that threatened to withhold tax support unless the library incorporated “age-appropriate standards” and explained what it deemed “age-appropriate material.”  The petition revolved around fourteen books (.003 percent of the library’s collection), nearly all of which were LGBTQ+ themed. Over the following months, a small group pushing to relocate books and defund the library grew louder, and a year into her role, the library director Debra Greenacre, resigned.

Pamela Paul will depart the New York Times Opinion section, according to New York magazine. Paul, who joined the New York Times in 2011, became editor of the New York Times Book Review in 2013 and began overseeing all books coverage in 2016. She joined Opinion as a columnist in 2022 and is known for “her willingness to buck liberal-left conventional wisdom,” which some of her colleagues admire, and others deem “rage bait.” The newspaper’s Opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury said, “We don’t discuss personnel matters, but any insinuation I make staffing or editorial decisions based solely on political viewpoints is false.”

Created by Humans officially launched its AI rights licensing platform for authors, Publishers Weekly reports. On the platform authors can set their own licensing preferences and claim their work by inputting the ISBN of their title or by directly uploading their work. AI companies can then choose and license content through an automated interface. The launch date for publishers and agents to access the platform has not yet been announced.

Museums, arts foundations, and philanthropists have created a fire relief fund for Los Angeles artists, the New York Times reports. Major contributors to the fund, which has raised $12 million, include the Getty Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Steven Spielberg’s foundation. The fund will be distributed by the Center for Cultural Innovation, and applications will be accepted starting Monday.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of California, a federal grand jury has charged three people with defrauding elderly writers across the country by convincing them that publishers and producers would turn their books into blockbuster films if the authors paid initial fees. The FBI identified more than eight hundred victims of the scam who together lost more than $44 million.

New research demonstrates that the size of U.S. library communities plays a role in audio circulation, Publishing Perspectives reports. In communities with fewer than ten thousand residents, digital audio made up 50 percent of total circulation in 2024. But in larger communities of more than five hundred residents, digital audiobooks made up 90 percent of circulation.

Neil Gaiman’s publishers have responded to sexual misconduct allegations against the author, Publishers Weekly reports. HarperCollins, Marvel, and W. W. Norton confirmed that there are no future books under contract with the author, and Gaiman’s literary and speaking agents did not respond to requests for comment.

British novelists Richard Osman and Kate Mosse criticized the UK government over its plan to give artificial intelligence companies the freedom to mine artistic works for data, the Guardian reports. Mosse maintained that responsible use of AI “cannot be at the expense of the creative industries.” Osman agreed: “If you want to use a copyrighted work, you ask permission, and then you pay for it. Anything else is theft,” he said.

The literary community in Los Angeles has been banding together amidst ongoing wildfires, Publishers Weekly reports. Schools, homes, and businesses have been destroyed as have literary archives, such as the personal library of the late artist Gary Indiana. But literary institutions have been sharing timely information on social media and offering mutual aid. Penguin Random House announced to its employees that it will make “unlimited matching donations” benefiting first responders and other residents in need. Local bookstores have served as spaces where people can gather and distribute necessary supplies. The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) announced that it has made “an immediate and meaningful” donation to the California Community Foundation, a nonprofit providing support to marginalized communities impacted by wildfires. The annual AWP conference is still set to take place in L.A. from March 27-29, but in a statement, AWP said that it “remains in active conversation with” its partner organizations “to make thoughtful and sensitive decisions that are in the best interest of the city and people of Los Angeles.”

Neil Gaiman denies allegations of sexual abuse and assault made by multiple women and reported in New York magazine this week, the New York Times reports. In a statement posted to his website, Gaiman denies engaging in “nonconsensual sexual activity with anyone,” and claims that he has avoided commenting sooner to avoid bringing attention to “a lot of misinformation.”

Publishers Weekly reports that the online literary magazine Joyland has relaunched as Joyland Publishing. The independent nonprofit publisher of fiction is now comprised of Joyland and Joyland Editions, a small press that plans to release two novellas annually with distribution through Asterism. 

Following Bookshop.org’s offer last week to match up to $10,000 in donations to support booksellers affected by the wildfires in Southern California, Forefront Books, Ingram Content Group, Macmillan Publishers, Dav Pilkey, and Mad Cave Studios are matching up to $45,000 in donations to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc).

Susie Alegre, the author of Human Rights, Robot Wrongs: Being Human in the Age of AI, says that 2025 will mark a shift in the public perception of the value of AI and that there will be “a renewed appreciation of the emotional, spiritual, political, cultural, and ultimately financial value of high-quality human writing.” This year, Alegre writes for Wired, “humans will reassert their worth.”

Peter Gizzi won the T. S. Eliot Prize for his poetry collection Fierce Elegy, the Guardian reports. The prize of £25,000 (approximately $30,385) is given annually for the best new poetry collection published in the UK or Ireland. Fierce Elegy, which draws on the poet’s experience of losing his brother, was published in the U.S. by Wesleyan University Press in 2023 and in the UK by Penguin in 2024. 

New York magazine has published an extensive report on the allegations of sexual assault, coercion, and abuse against best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman that were first made public last summer by a British podcast, Master. Since then, more women have shared allegations, and New York magazine features editor Lila Shapiro talked to four of them, including Scarlett Pavlovich, former babysitter to Gaiman’s son with performer and author Amanda Palmer. Gaiman, who declined to speak with Shapiro, has said that the relationships, including with Pavlovich, were consensual.

Print book sales increased by less than 1 percent in 2024, the first annual increase in three years, according to Publishers Weekly. The best-selling book of the year, with nearly 1.5 million copies sold, was The Women by Kristin Hannah.

Among the many structures consumed by the wildfires in Southern California is the 1907 Zane Grey Estate, “the Mediterranean-style residence of one of California’s great Western novelists,” the New York Times reports. 

Colm Tóibín writes about his experiences near the fires in Los Angeles for the London Review of Books, including the news that the personal library of Gary Indiana, the novelist, cultural critic and playwright who died in October, was destroyed by the Eaton fire. The author’s belongings had arrived on Tuesday at a private residence in Altadena from New York City, where he died. The fire consumed the home the next day.

Kaya Press, the Los Angeles–based publisher of books of the Asian Pacific diaspora, is the winner of the 2024 Constellation Award, a $10,000 prize sponsored by the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses. The judges for this year’s award were CLMP board members Beena Kamlani, author and freelance editor; Deborah Paredez, author, cofounder of CantoMundo, and associate professor at Columbia University; and Clarence Reynolds, former director of literary programs at the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College CUNY. For more about Kaya Press, read Small Press Points.