All posts tagged: Authors

The Rise of Parasite Authors

The Rise of Parasite Authors

Published by Sam Flores

Editor’s note: This work is part of AI Watchdog, The Atlantic’s ongoing investigation into the generative-AI industry. Earlier this summer, Tamra Westberry received a Facebook notification that made her heart sink. A fellow author had taken to social media to endorse Westberry’s latest book, Project Erebus, after reading about it in a weekly roundup of the latest paranormal-romance releases. Independent authors like Westberry, who is based in Texas and has published dozens of books under the pen name Tara West, usually welcome an encouraging word and a bit of cross-promotion. But Westberry was dismayed. She had never heard of a book called Project Erebus. And she certainly wasn’t its author. She looked up her author profile on Amazon, and there it was: Project Erebus, a book that featured character names she’d previously used, with a cover echoing that of her recent work. Translations were available in German, French, Italian, and Spanish. The book was a complete mystery to her, but after she read its sample pages, she suspected it was made by someone who’d used …

Explore the African Continent With These 8 Picture Books by African Authors

Explore the African Continent With These 8 Picture Books by African Authors

Published by Jenni Sidey

Join over 300,000 readers who get the latest book buzz, smart commentary, and must-read picks delivered straight to their inbox.<\/p>”,”thumbnail_url”:”https:\/\/bookriot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Book-Riot-Newsletter-mock_1000-150×150.jpg”,”category_url”:”https:\/\/bookriot.com\/newsletter\/book-riot-newsletter\/”,”checked”:true},{“name”:”Literary Activism”,”listname”:”BookRiot_LiteraryActivism”,”sfmc_name”:”BookRiot_LiteraryActivism”,”description”:” News you can use plus tips and tools for the fight against censorship and other bookish activism!<\/p>”,”thumbnail_url”:”https:\/\/bookriot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/LiteraryActivism_600x600-150×150.png”,”category_url”:”https:\/\/bookriot.com\/newsletter\/literary-activism\/”,”checked”:true},{“name”:”The Fright Stuff”,”listname”:”BookRiot_TheFrightStuff”,”sfmc_name”:”BookRiot_TheFrightStuff”,”description”:”Ready for some thrills and chills? Sign up to receive the latest and greatest from the world of horror.”,”thumbnail_url”:”https:\/\/bookriot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/TheFrightStuff_600x600-150×150.png”,”category_url”:”https:\/\/bookriot.com\/newsletter\/the-fright-stuff\/”,”checked”:true},{“name”:”Book Deals”,”listname”:”BookRiot_BookDeals”,”sfmc_name”:”BookRiot_BookDeals”,”description”:” Sign up for our Book Deals<\/strong> newsletter and get up to 80% off books you actually want to read.<\/p>”,”thumbnail_url”:”https:\/\/bookriot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/BookDeals_600x600-150×150.png”,”category_url”:”https:\/\/bookriot.com\/newsletter\/book-deals\/”,”checked”:true},{“name”:”Kissing Books”,”listname”:”BookRiot_KissingBooks”,”sfmc_name”:”BookRiot_KissingBooks”,”description”:” Sign up for Kissing Books<\/strong> to receive news, book recommendations, and more for residents of Romancelandia.<\/p>”,”thumbnail_url”:”https:\/\/bookriot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/KissingBooks_600x600-150×150.png”,”category_url”:”https:\/\/bookriot.com\/newsletter\/kissing-books\/”,”checked”:true}]”> Subscribe to Selected No Thanks Source link

Must-Read Books by Intersex Authors

Must-Read Books by Intersex Authors

Published by Jenni Sidey

Intersex. The “I” in LGBTQIA+. How I was born. Intersex is an umbrella term that describes a number of biological variations that place people not neatly in the male or female binary. These variations might be phenotypic, meaning outwardly presenting on the body. They can also be genotypic, meaning that they affect the chromosomes of the individual. According to Brown University, roughly 1.7% of the population is intersex, or roughly the same number of people in the world as those with red hair. To put it in more relatable terms, for every 59 people you know, one of them is statistically intersex. As for books? Those numbers are even lower, though there are some really great ones out there. Whether nonfiction about being intersex, fiction starring intersex characters, or books that have nothing to do with intersex, intersex authors are making some great books. And if you’re participating in the 2026 Read Harder Challenge, the books you’ll find below all satisfy task #19: Read a book by an intersex author. Get 15% off annual All …

Amazon Marketplaces for Authors- why your book ranks differently

Amazon Marketplaces for Authors- why your book ranks differently

Published by Jenni Sidey

Independent authors learn early that Amazon is not one store. It is a collection of national marketplaces, each with its own rankings, categories, prices and readers. Understanding Amazon marketplaces for authors is therefore essential for anyone trying to build an international readership. A romance novel sitting in the top hundred of its category on Amazon.com might be buried on Amazon.co.uk and absent from the charts on Amazon.de entirely. Those differences are not random. Rankings on each marketplace reflect sales and reading activity in that country. Category placement can differ between stores. Prices are set per marketplace, and a book priced sensibly in dollars can end up oddly priced in pounds or euros after conversion. For an author building readership abroad, each store needs its own attention. The Trouble With Checking From Home An author in the United States who opens Amazon.co.uk usually sees a version of the page influenced by their own location. They may be redirected, shown American pricing or offered a different set of recommendations. That makes it difficult to answer simple questions: …

Authors push back as publishers and agents make claims on Anthropic settlement

Authors push back as publishers and agents make claims on Anthropic settlement

Published by skeptic

Some authors hoping to receive their share of Anthropic’s $1.5 billion copyright settlement said they received surprising emails this week — emails informing them that someone else was making a claim on their payments. Anthropic settled a copyright class action suit last year, after a judge ruled that training AI models on copyrighted material is legal under fair use doctrine, but pirating that material was not. The deal received final approval in July, allowing the payments to move forward. Under the terms of the settlement, the authors of nearly 500,000 titles will be paid $3,000 for each pirated work. If the book is still in-print with a traditional publisher, the money will be split 50-50 between author and publisher. If the book was self-published, or if the publisher reverted the rights by allowing the book to go out-of-print, then the author should get the entire payment. But writers have been posting on social media that publishers seem to be claiming more than their fair share of some payments. For example, mystery and thriller author April …

‘Bold, brilliant, thrilling’: leading authors on the novels every school should teach | Books

‘Bold, brilliant, thrilling’: leading authors on the novels every school should teach | Books

Published by Sam Flores

For the first time ever, we have a British prime minister who studied for an English degree. Not all of his 58 predecessors went to university, but those who did favoured subjects such as history and classics and, more recently, philosophy, politics and economics. Yet reading fiction is a fantastic preparation for life, for understanding people and the times through which we live. Novels encourage empathy, they help you to stand in other people’s shoes, to navigate complicated, sometimes conflicting emotions, they entertain and bring joy. The creative industries contribute some £145.8bn each year to the UK economy; it is our soft superpower. In other words, books matter. Reading matters. However, there has been a marked decline over recent years in the numbers of children reading for pleasure. It’s why the National Literacy Trust designated 2026 the National Year of Reading. Already there has been a shift from a 20-year low in 2025 of 32.7% of eight-to-18-year-olds saying they enjoy reading in their free time up to 36.1%. It’s a start. We are also in …

Sophie, Standing There by Meg Mason review – a tale of literary obsession, with cameos from real-life authors | Fiction

Sophie, Standing There by Meg Mason review – a tale of literary obsession, with cameos from real-life authors | Fiction

Published by Sam Flores

The protagonist of Meg Mason’s new book, the follow-up to the 2020 tragicomedy Sorrow and Bliss, is an invisible woman. She might well be standing there but you won’t notice her. She’s a techie at literary festivals – the person who shuffles up to a famous writer a few minutes before their event and apologetically slides a microphone cable down their shirt while they’re making small talk with the chair or accepting a bottle of room-temperature mineral water from an anxious publicist. No man is a hero to his valet, and no writer is a hero to the technical staff lurking in the wings of a venue. Mason’s opening pages present a teasing but not quite libellous series of cameos from real writers: George Saunders deciding at an inconsiderately late stage to insist on swapping his headset for a lapel mic; Ann Patchett being frosty with a fan; Mick Herron accidentally stepping on someone’s foot and not apologising. double quotation mark Mason is brilliant at describing the small but intense joys of everyday life Sophie …

Great Scott! A Close Read of MacKenzie Scott’s Ambitious Substack Novel

Great Scott! A Close Read of MacKenzie Scott’s Ambitious Substack Novel

Published by Sam Flores

Long before she became one of the most fiscally generous people in history, Scott wanted to write fiction. She attended Princeton, drawn in by the prospect of studying with Toni Morrison; the vaunted author would advise Scott on her thesis project, a novel-length manuscript titled The Fathering Water. Morrison later told Vogue that Scott was “one of the best students I’ve ever had in my creative-writing classes…really one of the best.” Morrison continued to champion Scott following graduation, introducing Scott to her own agent, Amanda “Binky” Urban. Urban signed Scott as a client. (It’s not clear whether Urban’s agency, CAA, still represents Scott; a representative for the company didn’t respond to a request for comment.) In 2005, Fourth Estate published Scott’s debut novel, The Testing of Luther Albright, a quiet, emotionally exacting character excavation that unspools the life of the titular Luther—an engineer whose copper piping system begins to fail in the wake of an earthquake. (His inability to plumb his own emotions also causes a rift between him and his family.) The novel won …

A Hit Author’s Film Adaptation Went Horribly Wrong. What Happened on the Set of ‘Children of Blood and Bone’?

A Hit Author’s Film Adaptation Went Horribly Wrong. What Happened on the Set of ‘Children of Blood and Bone’?

Published by Sam Flores

Adeyemi didn’t respond publicly to Stenberg’s post at the time, but some sources believe this is when the tension between the author and the team behind the adaptation was first sparked. Though insiders say Adeyemi had been involved in the casting process and had been supportive and excited by Stenberg’s casting from the get-go, their relationship became strained after Stenberg’s video. Adeyemi would later share on TikTok a screengrab from a February 2025 text chain with Stenberg in which the author speaks harshly to the star: “Do not ever use my name in an interview or video again. Do not text me. Do not call me.” Adeyemi arrived on set two days after Stenberg’s social media post, according to a source with ties to the movie. She filmed a cameo in which she plays a character present during a training sequence with Mama Agba (Davis), who is mentoring Zélie (Mbedu). But the tension between the author and actor became palpable on set, the source says, and difficult to navigate. After she returned from filming, Adeyemi …

Agatha Christie’s relatives make eye-watering amount 50 years after author’s death

Agatha Christie’s relatives make eye-watering amount 50 years after author’s death

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Dame Agatha Christie left behind some of the greatest murder mysteries of all time, and for her family, it amounts to a lot more – these whodunits are racking up tens of millions in profit. It’s been 50 years since Christie died, aged 85, but the world has been following the queen of crime’s lead ever since, with film and TV producers getting their fingerprints all over her novels by adapting them into hit projects. Netflix recently found success with the 2026 limited series Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials, and Kenneth Branagh played the moustachioed sleuth Hercule Poirot in three high-profile film adaptations from 2017 to 2023. Agatha Christie’s works have endured – and are making her family £33m (Getty Images) Other Christie adaptations to have recently aired include Tommy & Tuppence, as well as Towards Zero, with a new Miss Marple …