The Ink Sink

You can support us and see our transcripts on our LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/inksinkpodcast

Our sources for this episode:

• A breakdown of high fantasy and low fantasy from Book Riot: https://bookriot.com/high-fantasy-vs-low-fantasy/

• Spotify boosts popular audiobooks: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/audio-books/article/94253-spotify-reports-exponential-audiobook-growth.html

• As the publishing industry digests Spotify's audiobooks program, independent authors notice the terms have shifted: https://writerbeware.blog/2024/02/19/outrage-over-new-terms-of-use-at-findaway-voices-forces-change/

• This sad but necessary story about what librarians have to put up with: https://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/story/School-and-Public-Librarians-describe-on-the-job-harassment-censorship

• Very cool new literature prize: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/books/inside-literary-prize.html

• A long-overdue congratulations to Hannah Bond, whom you can now read about in depth: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/14/books/hannah-crafts-biography-gregg-hecimovich.html

• Celebrations: Ángela Ruiz Robles invented an early e-reader: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/obituaries/angela-ruiz-robles-overlooked.html

Read the books we talked about in this episode: Disclaimer: If you purchase a book through one of our Bookshop links, we receive a commission. But more importantly, Bookshop also supports independent bookstores with every book sold. They’ve raised over $30 million so far!

• Harrow the Ninth: a devastating, dizzying book written in second person that Annie will love til her dying day: https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781250313218

• The Ninth House: dark academia meets gritty urban detective meets magic secret societies, it’s every bit as good as it sounds: https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781250751362

Chapters:

00:00 Intro 03:35 Corrections corner 06:37 Spotify boosts audiobooks, what’s it costing independent authors? 15:52 Librarians are still dealing with bulls*** 19:29 A new literary prize for incarcerated people debuts 22:22 Celebrating two amazing women who never got their due 28:44 Annie is reading The Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo 35:28 Kali Koda – No, wait, it’s the outro

Subscribe, support, and shop on our LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/inksinkpodcast

Our sources for today’s show:

• Okay but just LOOK at T. Kingfisher’s cool book covers: https://bookshop.org/search?keywords=T.+Kingfisher
• Kali’s love for LeVar Burton means that we are HYPED: https://bookriot.com/butterfly-in-the-sky-reading-rainbow-documentary-coming-out/
• You can check out “LeVar Burton Reads,” the podcast where this man’s incredible voice is on full display: https://www.levarburtonpodcast.com/
• Smithsonian Magazine rounds up libraries’ most checked-out books of 2023: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-most-borrowed-books-from-public-libraries-in-2023-180983521/
• Some good news: 3 in 4 adults can discern real headlines from fake ones: https://journalistsresource.org/media/post-truth-fake-news-real-news/
• Parisian booksellers get to stick around during the Olympics! https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/14/world/europe/paris-olympics-booksellers.html
• Congress hears from the publishing industry on how AI will impact its future: https://pressgazette.co.uk/north-america/conde-nast-ceo-roger-lynch-ai-senate/
• What’s going on with the Hugo Awards: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/awards-and-prizes/article/94229-resignations-censures-follow-in-wake-of-hugo-awards-controversy.html
• A measured look at the "Goodreads situation": https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/feb/17/god-forbid-that-a-dog-should-die-when-goodreads-reviews-go-bad
• Shondaland celebrates women making waves in publishing: https://www.shondaland.com/inspire/books/a45897413/these-women-represent-the-future-book-publishing-industry/
• Black women being awarded for unpublished manuscripts: https://publishingperspectives.com/2023/10/cassava-republic-a-30000-nonfiction-prize-for-black-women/

You can browse the books we talked about on our BookShop.Org page. We get a commission if you buy from our lists, but more importantly, BookShop supports independent bookstores with every purchase! They’ve raised over $30 million so far!

• Lessons in Chemistry, where a woman takes her science background to the masses through a cooking show (Bonnie Garmus): https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9780385547345
• I’m Glad My Mom Died, an account of a former child star (Jennette McCurdy): https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781982185824
• Spare, the buzzy memoir from Prince Harry the Duke of Sussex: https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9780593593806
• Fourth Wing, a book about dragons and the people who love them (Rebecca Yarros): https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781649374042
• Verity, the romance bestseller that’s been all over your FYP (Colleen Hoover): https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781538724736
• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, a tale of two friends making a video game (Gabrielle Zevin): https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9780593321201
• Crush, a poetry collection about love and loss in a modern world (Richard Siken): https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9780300107890

Chapters

00:00 Welcome back!

03:34 Reading Rainbow documentary coming soon!

07:02 Americans’ favorite library books

09:30 Phew: We CAN spot fake news

12:57 Paris + Olympics: Bookselling Drama

15:50 Media is begging Congress to curb AI

21:16 Hugo Awards bowed to China

25:25 What is going on with Goodreads RN?

35:58 Celebrating the future of publishing and unpublished manuscripts from black women!

38:58 Kali is reading “Crush”

41:46 The Kali Coda

42:49 Thanks for listening!

Follow/support/see us on our LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/inksinkpodcast

Warning: We swear a bit in this episode. As we said, 2023 was WILD.

Our sources for this episode:

- The independent romance author who faked her own death and then somehow things got worse? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/14/romance-novelist-faked-death-susan-meachen

- Book bans continued to come in hard in 2023: https://www.npr.org/2023/09/20/1200647985/book-bans-libraries-schools

- As of this writing, this is the latest in the Texan book-rating law: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/court-refuses-revive-texas-public-school-book-rating-law-2024-01-17/

- The Spine Collector, the spiritual impetus of this podcast, will be deported to a country that will have him: https://www.vulture.com/2023/03/book-thief-filippo-bernardini-gets-no-jail-time-deported.html

- We’re in a new era of digital content. Separately (?) we’re in a new era of AI. We unpack it here: https://theinksink.substack.com/p/buzzfeed-falls-and-ai-rises

- From WSJ: “Libraries Are the New Front Line in America’s Mental-Health Crisis” (https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/library-services-homeless-mental-health-e1f513b7)

- Dolly Parton, America’s gem, expands her Imagination Library: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/92981-dolly-parton-s-imagination-library-expands-national-reach.html

Want to pick up books from our storefront? You should! Bookshop.Org supports independent bookstores with every book sold. (Disclaimer: we also get a small commission when you buy from one of our links.)

- Camp Damascus, the story of a queer woman reclaiming her mind, her love, and her community (by Chuck Tingle): https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781250874627

- All We Can Save, essays from women around the world who offer hope and encouragement in the fight against climate change (edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson): https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9780593237083

- The Song of Achilles, a soulful, beautifully written retelling of the Iliad from the perspective of Patroclus as he fights for his love, Achilles (by Madeline Miller): https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9780062060624

- Beware of Chicken, cozy journey through a fantasy land with farming, roosters, and mystical quests (by Casualfarmer): https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781039448094

- Swordheart, the hijinks of a suburban widow and her mystical guardian as they travel through a wild fantasy world (by T. Kingfisher): https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781039448094

00:00 Welcome back to the Ink Sink!
03:22 Romance author says “JK, I’m alive!”
06:07 Book bans keep rolling
12:54 The Spine Collector Saga
16:59 The new world of digital news
23:38 Publishing jobs are growing
26:10 Librarians are bada**
30:42 Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library expands
32:00 Favorite books: Swordheart
34:03 Favorite books: Beware of Chicken
37:23 Favorite books: Song of Achilles and All We Can Save
41:58 Favorite books: Camp Damascus and Effin Birds
45:16 Looking forward to Season 3!
50:05 Thanks for listening!

Find out how to keep up with us and support the show here: https://linktr.ee/inksinkpodcast

Warning: We curse in this episode. We have FEELINGS about internet trolls.

Listen to part one where we covered ⁠The Chosen One and the Three Witches⁠.

In this episode, we cover Annie's favorite trope: Enemies to Lovers.

We also cover one of the most maligned tropes in fiction: The Mary Sue.

Check out our sources here:

• Some fan commentary from Reddit: ⁠https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/ue11mp/mary_sue_isnt_real_and_she_cannot_hurt_you/⁠
• Some fan commentary from Fansplaining: ⁠https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/mary-sue⁠
• An academic study into Mary Sue characters: ⁠http://www.merrycoz.org/papers/MARYSUE.xhtml⁠
• A history deep dive from Smithsonian Magazine: ⁠https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/these-women-coined-term-mary-sue-180972182/⁠
• The TV Tropes wiki: ⁠https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue⁠   
• Summary of the Epic of Gilgamesh: ⁠https://www.history.com/news/what-is-the-oldest-known-piece-of-literature⁠
• A master list of enemies-to-lovers TV couples: ⁠https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahmarder/best-tv-enemies-to-lovers-couples⁠

·       The Folger Shakespeare Library’s exhibit on consumerism in London in the 1500s-1700s: https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Consuming_Splendor:_Luxury_Goods_in_England,_1580%E2%80%931680

·       The History of Cookbooks and Where We Are Today, UCLAHCI https://eatwell.healthy.ucla.edu/2021/03/08/the-history-of-cookbooks-and-where-we-are-today/

·       A cool look into early cookbooks: The Library of Congress has a cookbook that was presented to Queen Elizabeth I, purporting to be from 1390, published in the 1700s: https://www.loc.gov/item/44031282/

·       Apropos of nothing: Here’s a horror movie about Winnie the Pooh that was made as soon as Pooh got into the public domain. We’re pretty sure they did this just because they knew Disney couldn’t sue them for it? We are constantly in awe of the human race’s capacity for ridiculous things! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19623240/

·       Using cookbooks to study genealogy and local history: https://repository.ifla.org/bitstream/123456789/2793/1/s07-2023-brannock-en.pdf

·       Food "fakelore" has been a part of cookbooks going back centuries: https://daily.jstor.org/the-fakelore-of-food-origins/

·       A deep dive on cooking in anime: Why Anime About Food and Cooking Became So Popular: https://www.cbr.com/gourmet-anime-genre-about-food-cooking-eating-why-popular/

·       Many cookbooks come from book packagers, which is a business you can hear more about in our episode about why you’re wrong about Goosebumps: https://theinksink.substack.com/p/book-packaging-why-youre-wrong-about

·       And yes, of course, we have a link to Anime with Alvin – a show where a chef recreates dishes from anime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcLTe8MoAV4&list=PLopY4n17t8RAHz5OSGQP6I9z7UZqAZ4WW

·       Check out Quincy’s Tavern and support fellow podcast creators! https://www.quincystavern.xyz/

·       And check out some of the themed cookbooks we talked about here: https://bookshop.org/lists/pop-culture-takes-over-cookbooks

·       Esquire's review of the 1961 Playboy cookbook: https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/a21050/playboy-cookbook-food-15268930/

·       A history of erotic cookbooks from Eater: https://www.eater.com/23160117/erotic-cookbooks-history-sexuality-playboy

·       What’s the Point of Food in Fiction? by Adam Gopnick: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/09/cooked-books

·       "This Wizard of the Cooking Stove": How P.G. Wodehouse Contributed to the Field of Gastronomy Through Anatole, the French Chef, in the Jeeves-and-Wooster Series: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/ejfds/vol1/iss2/5/

·       Romance Novels Are Increasingly Getting Hot and Heavy in the Kitchen by Bettina Makalintal: https://www.eater.com/23188870/summer-romance-novels-baking-cooking

Are you ready to diversify your kitchen? See our list of cookbooks by marginalized authors here! https://bookshop.org/lists/diversify-your-kitchen

00:00 Welcome Back! 01:32 Corrections Corner 03:11 We’re Talking About Cookbooks! 06:37 The History of Writing Down Food Stuff 18:48 Where Do the Ladies Fit In? 23:26 Pop Culture Takes Over 31:33 Time for Some Erotic Cookbooks 40:12 Food in Romance and Pop Fiction 46:27 Kali Coda 47:06 Thanks for Listening!

Stalk us wherever you scroll: https://linktr.ee/inksinkpodcast

Notes:

• Friends clip of Phoebe getting sick and having a sexy voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXBOQAkrHAo

• The episode of Freakonomics on how horrible meetings are: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/season-9-episode-20

• New words from Dictionary.com: https://www.dictionary.com/e/new-dictionary-words-fall-2023/

• A viral roundup of famous nepo babies from Vulture: https://www.vulture.com/article/what-is-a-nepotism-baby.html

• Our episode on the rise of AI in digital media: https://youtu.be/icUnI1AgL1A

• Jordan Peterson adds another problematic thing to his list of problematic things: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/01/society-of-authors-calls-use-of-bad-reviews-for-book-blurbs-morally-questionable

• In our episode on the “fall” of English majors, we talked about a bookstore that was sticking it to haters by printing one-star reviews on t-shirts: https://youtu.be/T_UFw1qwsVc

• Read the article from Vulture that’s getting the bookish corners of the internet to roll their eyes: https://www.vulture.com/article/fanfic-romance-reylo-publishing-trend.html

• Elsewhere, Mashable rounds up some novels featuring social media: https://mashable.com/article/tech-fiction-books-novels-sillicon-valley-startups

• Millie Bobby Brown wrote a book. Or did she? https://todayinbooks.substack.com/p/millie-bobby-browns-novel-isnt-great

And if you have any funny publishing stories or meeting stories to share with us, please do! Email us at InkSinkPodcast@gmail.com.

You can follow, subscribe, and support us here: https://linktr.ee/inksinkpodcast

Warning: We swear in this episode. We REALLY don't like online misinformation.

Some of our sources:

• Our episode on fact-checking: https://youtu.be/c-eS6lS584w
• Be careful about journal studies. There are best practices for looking at those: https://journalistsresource.org/health/two-studies-examine-preprints/

• Some journalists don’t look at peer-reviewed scholarly work for their stories: https://journalistsresource.org/home/user-survey-journalists-research-habits/
• Ground News: https://ground.news/
• The Associated Press: https://apnews.com/
• AI fact-checking tools from Journalism Tools: https://journaliststoolbox.ai/ai-fact-checking-tools/
• Tineye: https://services.tineye.com/

· Pritzker (who doesn’t have a starched collar) officially signed a law to force libraries to comply with new regulations that should make it harder to ban books: https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/12/us/illinois-public-libraries-schools-book-bans/index.html

· Responses from some librarians: https://www.news-gazette.com/arts-entertainment/town-hall-should-state-cut-off-funding-to-those-who-ban-books-local-librarians-weigh/article_3df07d1b-c3fb-5f89-ac23-55241797a645.html

· Meanwhile, media jobs being cut left and right: https://www.axios.com/2023/06/13/media-job-cuts-record

· Our episode on the new era of digital media: https://theinksink.substack.com/p/buzzfeed-falls-and-ai-rises

· Book jobs aren’t safe either: https://fortune.com/2023/07/18/penguin-random-house-buyouts-editors-book-publishing-layoffs/

· One major problem with the book business: excess and lack of planning: https://news.yahoo.com/photo-publishing-company-pile-brand-040000727.html

· KKR buys S&S: https://slate.com/business/2023/08/simon-schuster-kkr-private-equity-publishing-consolidation.html

· Our episode on the slow death of local news: https://youtu.be/wXKAPMCHx_E

We recommend supporting diverse authors by buying their books! Here are some collections:

· Books by trans authors (from The Mary Sue): https://bookshop.org/lists/books-by-trans-authors-the-mary-sue

· Books by breakout Latina authors (from Refinery29): https://bookshop.org/lists/books-by-breakout-latina-authors-r29

Follow/Listen/Watch/Troll: https://linktr.ee/inksinkpodcast

Check us out on FB/IG/YT: https://linktr.ee/inksinkpodcast

- Some good news: more bookstores! https://lithub.com/good-news-there-are-more-bookstores-in-the-us-this-year-than-last

- The ongoing Internet Archive debate: “Information wants to be free” or “information wants to be profitable” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/media/internet-archive-emergency-lending-library.html

- Heck yes, student newspapers! https://mailchi.mp/poynter/3m735bk8za?e=e5489eccb5

- At this point, they're trolling us, right? https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/92897-judge-finds-revived-amazon-e-book-monopoly-suit-should-proceed.html

- The new president of poetry: https://lithub.com/the-academy-of-american-poets-has-named-its-first-latino-president/

- Dolly expands her Imagination Library with new commitments from Alabama and Washington: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/92981-dolly-parton-s-imagination-library-expands-national-reach.html

Check out the books we talked about this week*:

- Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle: https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781250874627

- Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir: https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781250313225

- Yellowface by R. F. Kuang: https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9780063250833

- Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda: https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781632157096

* If you buy a book from one of our links, we earn a commission. But more importantly, a portion of every purchase through Bookshop.org goes to support independent bookstores. Thank you!

We want to hear from you! Reach out wherever you find us: https://linktr.ee/inksinkpodcast

Watch a viral TikTok showing Brennan Lee Mulligan (a popular D&D YouTuber and “internet boyfriend”) roleplaying as an anarchist goblin: https://www.tiktok.com/@emmaeditsvids/video/7228356808497384746

The new D&D movie is surprisingly good: https://kotaku.com/dungeons-and-dragons-movie-review-budget-easter-eggs-1850294824

Just because it makes me happy: Here’s the classic scene from Aliens where Vasquez wakes up from cryo sleep and starts doing pullups: https://youtu.be/Cb8bqidtzzo

While we’re on the topic ­– check out Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies, and the Internet on Netflix. The season finale has hackers recounting their adventures, including one hacker’s roundabout way of doing research with his lawyer: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21029130/

And finally, here are the news articles we referenced in this episode:

• Authors supporting each other: https://lithub.com/whats-going-on-with-all-the-empty-author-signing-pics/

• PRH and PEN go after book banner in Florida: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/92322-pen-america-penguin-random-house-sue-florida-school-district-over-unconstitutional-book-bans.html

• Texas judge ordered books returned to a library in April: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/91903-judge-finds-texas-library-s-book-bans-unconstitutional-orders-books-returned.html

• Some hard numbers on book bans: https://publishingperspectives.com/2023/03/ala-book-bannings-in-the-usa-broke-all-records-in-2022/

• The week in libraries from Publishers Weekly: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/index.html

• Internet Archive loses its case: https://publishingperspectives.com/2023/03/copyright-us-court-rules-against-internet-archive/

• In other legal cases: Dominion settles with Fox News. This matters for defamation cases in general: https://mailchi.mp/poynter/gyhd1w8glz?e=e5489eccb5

• South Asian translated books getting their due: https://publishingperspectives.com/2023/03/the-salt-program-focuses-on-translating-south-asian-literature/

If you were interested in any of the books we recommended, you can check them out here:

• Minor Mage by T. Kingfisher*: https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781614505006

• Swordheart by T. Kingfisher*: https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781614505228

• The Mincing Mockingbird Guide to Troubled Birds, which you can see on its publisher's site here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316490/the-mincing-mockingbird-guide-to-troubled-birds-by-mockingbird-the-mincing/

* We get a commission when someone buys a book from one of our lists. But more importantly, Bookshop supports small independent bookstores with every purchase. They've raised over $27 million for small bookstores so far!

See all our transcripts, support us on Ko-Fi, and shop our book lists here: https://linktr.ee/inksinkpodcast

Our sources for this week’s show:

• Warner Brothers developing a new Harry Potter series: https://deadline.com/2023/04/harry-potter-tv-series-max-release-date-cast-1235323284/
• Recent controversy surrounding old Dr. Seuss books:  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/books/dr-seuss-books.html
• Robin James writing in the Journal of Popular Music Studies: Feminist responses to the “can we separate artwork from artist” question in the era of #MeToo popular feminism: https://online.ucpress.edu/jpms/article/32/4/75/114312/Must-Be-Love-On-The-Brain-Feminist-responses-to
• Phillip Deen writing in Studies in American Humor: Separating the Art From the Artist in Stand-Up Comedy: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/studamerhumor.5.2.0288
• Fansplaining episode on writing trans characters: https://www.fansplaining.com/episodes/166-writing-trans-characters

The last time we published this episode, we received questions on where people could go to educate themselves about some of the problematic public figures we talked about. We’ve gathered some sources into a list below.

Warning: THIS LIST CONTAINS TRANSPHOBIA, NAZISM, RACISM, HOMOPHOBIA, ANTISEMITISM, SEXISM, SEXUAL ASSAULT, AND ABUSE.

• Vox gives a timeline of Rowling’s comments and actions around trans people (with links included so that you can read her statements and judge for yourself): https://www.vox.com/culture/23622610/jk-rowling-transphobic-statements-timeline-history-controversy
• (Not the thread Annie was reading at the time, but still comprehensive) Historian’s discussion of Lovecraft’s white supremacist views: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/hpgbgy/h_p_lovecrafts_racism_and_views_on_white/
• From 2013, Salon gathers links to sources for Orson Scott Card’s comments on gay people (again, with links, so you can judge for yourself): https://www.salon.com/2013/05/07/sci_fi_icon_orson_scott_card_hates_fan_fiction_the_homosexual_agenda_partner/
• German composer Richard Wagner’s antisemitism entry in the Encyclopedia Brittanica: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Wagner-German-composer/Wagners-anti-Semitism
• Tippi Hedren accuses Alfred Hitchcock of assault: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/31/tippi-hedren-alfred-hitchcock-sexually-assaulted-me
• The Southern Poverty Law Center’s discussion guide on sexism in the civil rights movement: https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/sexism-in-the-civil-rights-movement-a-discussion-guide
• A measured look at Gandhi’s history and legacy: https://www.npr.org/2019/10/02/766083651/gandhi-is-deeply-revered-but-his-attitudes-on-race-and-sex-are-under-scrutiny

See all our platforms on our LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/inksinkpodcast

Plus, see our brand new Ko-Fi page: https://ko-fi.com/inksinkpodcast

The books we talked about in this episode*:

• Fictitious Dishes by Dinah Fried: ⁠https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9780062279835⁠

Our sources for this episode:

• Some delicious lit to start us off: https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/04/16/fictitous-dishes-dinah-fried-book/
• Our episode on fact-checking: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/daBYHmy6BAb

• Independent bookstore employees attended a panel on how they deal with these things: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/91643-wi2023-booksellers-respond-to-book-challenges-and-bans.html
• The state of North Dakota is planning to pass some very vague laws with lots of concerning language that is meant to ban depictions of sex in books in the state: https://bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/north-dakota-lawmakers-advance-book-ban-bills-targeting-sexual-material/article_69969032-ae04-11ed-a3bb-9feda3bb0e30.html
• National Sexuality Education Standards: Core Content and Skills: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED528427
• In Wyoming, state politicians push back: https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/politics-government/2023-02-23/in-mountain-west-statehouses-conservative-lawmakers-push-to-censor-books-in-schools-libraries
• Illinois governor stands up for books: https://bookriot.com/politicians-need-to-address-book-bans/
• The Spine Collector avoids jail time, still faces $80k in fines and deportation: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/23/books/filippo-bernardini-unpublished-manuscripts-deported.html
• More from the ChatGPT debate: ⁠https://countercraft.substack.com/p/the-flood-of-chatgpt-crap-about-to⁠
• Adam Conover on AI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro130m-f_yk
• The Ozy execs are headed to prison: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ozy-media-ceo-carlos-watson-arrested-after-a-former-executive-pleads-guilty-to-fraud-355e9f89
• The original Ozy saga: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/26/business/media/ozy-media-goldman-sachs.html

* Disclaimer: We earn a commission when you buy a book from one of our Bookshop.Org lists. But more importantly, Bookshop.Org supports independent bookstores with every purchase, with over $26 million raised so far!

Check out our LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/inksinkpodcast

Our sources:   

Link to the substack: https://draculadaily.substack.com/about 

Slate interview: https://slate.com/culture/2022/05/dracula-daily-bram-stoker-book-newsletter-jonathan-harker.html 

Dumb Cuneiform: https://dumbcuneiform.com/#faq   

Know Your Meme doing the lords work and tracking down dates: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/dracula-daily 

Socks thread: https://cheezburger.com/10036229/beautiful-story-of-socks-finding-her-forever-home-twitter-thread 

Recommendations from our survey respondents: 

Infinity Train: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8146754/

The Owl House: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8050756/

Les Mis Daily: https://lesmisdaily.substack.com/

Frankenstein Weekly: https://frankweekly.substack.com/

If you'd like to sponsor us, you can reach out at InkSinkPodcast@gmail.com.

Please direct any feedback for Kali to Annie's mailbox. This is the burden she's taken on herself.

Read the best of Ogden Nash, now on our "Hater's Guide to Poetry" list! (https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781566637039)

Our news sources for today's episode:

• The story of Chuck Tingle from Vox: https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/18/12775742/who-is-chuck-tingle-fake-explained
• The book Camp Damascus, the new YA title from Tingle and Nightfire: https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781250874627
• We talked about Tingle in Season 1, Episode 5: Banned Books Bash: https://youtu.be/gKLSxBhA6XA
• Tingle's announcement with Nightfire on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChuckTingle/status/1550665547917824000
• Our segment on how authors make money (or don't): https://youtu.be/VtYyJobee2Y?t=1019
• Breakdown of ARC controversies from Counter Craft: https://countercraft.substack.com/p/publishing-numbers-big-and-small
• Bookstore sticks it to the haters: https://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=4427&share=true#m59269
• Trans support at NYT hits a roadblock: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/new-york-times-trans-coverage-debate
• Interview with the letter's writers: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/news-brief-the-battle-over-nyts-lurid-tabloid-coverage-of-trans-issues
• English departments in peril? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/06/the-end-of-the-english-major
• Bonus link for Dollywood's recycling system: ⁠https://www.wvlt.tv/content/news/Why-is-there-no-recycling-bins-at-Dollywood-565103962.html⁠
• "What can you do with a BA in English?": https://youtu.be/fWw1gNrCwi8

Marginalized people kicking butt in publishing!

• The inaugural class of the women's prize for nonfiction: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/10/why-we-need-womens-prize-for-nonfiction
• Stirred Stories gets a write-up in WaPo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/28/stirred-stories-publishing-diversity/
• Fantastic (relatively) new column from “Dorthea,” supporting book lovers in need: https://lithub.com/story-type/life-advice-for-book-lovers/

Bookshop.Org doesn't have The Mincing Mockingbird Guide to Troubled Birds, but you can see it on its publisher's site here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316490/the-mincing-mockingbird-guide-to-troubled-birds-by-mockingbird-the-mincing/

But you can see everything else we're reading here: https://bookshop.org/lists/what-we-re-reading-20648183-3934-47b4-aebd-e8457216d11f

All You Can Save collection here: https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9780593237083

Support us, follow us, and see all our transcripts at our LinkTree! https://linktr.ee/inksinkpodcast

• AI roundup from the Morning Brew: https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/ai-is-creating-problems-publishers-human-authors
• CNET pauses AI-generated articles: https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/cnet-pauses-publishing-ai-written-stories-after-disclosure-controversy,241859
• ChatGPT making fake citations: https://blogs.library.duke.edu/blog/2023/03/09/chatgpt-and-fake-citations/
• BuzzFeed doubles down: https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/digital-journalism/buzzfeed-chatgpt/
• We covered the end of BuzzFeed investigations last year: https://youtu.be/MNRec-TVk6Y
• Another measured take on AI, from the business side: https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/drama-angst-and-potential-abuse-dark-side-of-ai-for-the-publishing-industry/
• Breathtakingly annoying take on egg prices from WSJ: Just stop eating breakfast: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/cpi-report-today-january-2023-inflation/card/to-save-money-maybe-you-should-skip-breakfast-fSd6mz0miaAPhUFb2jgy
• BuzzFeed News shuts down: https://www.axios.com/2023/04/21/buzzfeed-news-digital-media
• Vice News Tonight shuts down: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/27/media/vice-news-tonight-canceled/index.html

Follow/Support/Learn from our LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/inksinkpodcast

Join Kali and listen to our podcast on YouTube!

If you listen to us on iTunes, as a heads up, Apple is the only service that charges us to put up our podcast. If you'd like to help us keep our show free on iTunes, you can support us on Spotify, Substack, or LinkTree.

If you loved our poetry episode (so many of you did!) you can check out the transcript, which has all of the poems Kali talked about. And you can check out her favorite poetry books on our Bookshop.Org list.*

Our sources for this episode:

• Why did we go apes*** for The DaVinci Code? A historian answers.
• The FBI was spying on your library checkouts.
• The New York Times interviews a school librarian at the heart of a book-banning debate.
• The Harper Collins workers union has reached an agreement with management.
• T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon breaks down how much bestselling authors can expect to make.
• Contributors to the NYT want the paper to do better by trans folks.
• The Cambridge Dictionary updated its definition of "woman."

Celebrating women and minorities in publishing:

• Julia A. Reidhead will be the new chair of the Association of American Publishers.
• Four breakout Latina authors sat down with Refinery29 to talk about their experiences in publishing.

Check out the books we talked about this week*:

• Books by breakout Latina authors
• Kali continues her saga with Gideon and Harrow the Ninth
• But she's crushing on the new T. Kingfisher book: Nettle and Bone
• She also recommends Kingfisher's Swordheart
• Annie loves all these books, but she hasn't read any other books in their series-es
• She's also reading The Library Book

Listen, watch, read, and follow us with the links in our LinkTree!

* We get a commission when someone buys a book from one of our lists. But more importantly, Bookshop supports small independent bookstores with every purchase. They've raised over $25 million for small bookstores so far!

Listen to part one where we covered The Chosen One and the Three Witches.

In this episode, we cover Annie's favorite trope: Enemies to Lovers.

We also cover one of the most maligned tropes in fiction: The Mary Sue.

Check out our sources here:

Some fan commentary from Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/ue11mp/mary_sue_isnt_real_and_she_cannot_hurt_you/

Some fan commentary from Fansplaining: https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/mary-sue

An academic study into Mary Sue characters: http://www.merrycoz.org/papers/MARYSUE.xhtml

A history deep dive from Smithsonian Magazine: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/these-women-coined-term-mary-sue-180972182/

The TV Tropes wiki: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue

Summary of the Epic of Gilgamesh: https://www.history.com/news/what-is-the-oldest-known-piece-of-literature A master list of enemies-to-lovers TV couples: https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahmarder/best-tv-enemies-to-lovers-couples

Follow us on social media and see our transcripts here: https://linktr.ee/inksinkpodcast

Heard of the Icelandic Book Flood? Here's a deep dive: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/icelands-christmas-book-flood-is-a-force-of-nature-180981293/

Book ban update: foundations giving more money to help libraries buy books: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/91016-we-need-diverse-books-launches-bookssavelives-initiative-against-censorship.html

Social Book clubs: still a thing: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/dec/12/legally-bookish-reese-witherspoon-and-the-boom-in-celebrity-book-clubs

E-book price fixing lawsuit is back, for how long? https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/91089-amazon-publishers-seek-to-knock-out-revived-e-book-price-fixing-suit.html

Shadow Libraries Fought the law, but the law won: https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2022/december/in-the-shadow-library

The TikTok rumor mill blames influencers for the FBI's attention, but that seems unlikely: https://www.vulture.com/2022/12/booktoks-busy-year-plagiarism-period-drama-and-more.html

A great overview of the AI conversation as it stands today: https://countercraft.substack.com/p/the-only-sure-thing-with-ai-is-writing

Another wrinkle in the AI question, who owns the content it creates? https://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2022/12/21/who-ultimately-owns-content-generated-by-chatgpt-and-other-ai-platforms/

And in poetry: Are poems in the eyes of the beholder? https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/can-ai-write-authentic-poetry/

Check out the books we cover at our Bookshop storefront: https://bookshop.org/shop/theinksink

If you buy a book from one of our Bookshop lists, we may get a commission. But more importantly, Bookshop will donate a portion of the sale to a local independent bookstore. Support your local stores today!

Our episode on what you can do with a BA in English: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/PNJlUb8BExb

Thanks for listening!

Some levity to start us off: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/books/review/literary-dinner-parties.html

Year-end roundup: https://lithub.com/the-10-biggest-literary-stories-of-the-year-2/

A look at the data from the NYC publishing business: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/financial-reporting/article/91028-new-report-finds-nyc-publishing-bookselling-jobs-fell-between-2010-and-2020.html

It's not just book publishing, mag publishing struggling too: Literary magazines struggle, taking much of the old-school writing world with them: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/books/astra-magazine.html

In the UK, women and minorities make much less as authors. But even worse, authors across all demographics are making less and less: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/dec/06/writers-earnings-have-plummeted-with-women-black-and-mixed-race-authors-worst-hit

In the midst of this: Harper Collins Employees strike for pay and respect: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/books/harpercollins-strike.html

Follow the latest on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hcpunion

Independent bookseller good news: https://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=4381&share=true#m58567

Women and minorities killin it in publishing:

Missing Pages, a podcast about literary scandals, wrapped its first season: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/22/missing-pages-podcast-bethanne-patrick-interview-book-scandals

Journal of Popular Music Studies: https://online.ucpress.edu/jpms/article/32/4/75/114312/Must-Be-Love-On-The-Brain-Feminist-responses-to

Studies in American Humor: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/studamerhumor.5.2.0288

[Check out our Bookshop page for our favorite books! https://bookshop.org/shop/theinksink]

Casey Brienza, Publishing Research Quarterly (2009), Books, Not Comics: Publishing Fields, Globalization, and Japanese Manga in the United States: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-009-9114-2

Toni Johnson-Woods, "Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives": https://worldcat.org/formats-editions/676700636

Link to the substack: https://draculadaily.substack.com/about 

Slate interview: https://slate.com/culture/2022/05/dracula-daily-bram-stoker-book-newsletter-jonathan-harker.html 

Dumb Cuneiform: https://dumbcuneiform.com/#faq   

Know Your Meme doing the lords work and tracking down dates: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/dracula-daily 

Socks thread: https://cheezburger.com/10036229/beautiful-story-of-socks-finding-her-forever-home-twitter-thread 

Recommendations from our survey respondents: 

Infinity Train: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8146754/

The Owl House: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8050756/

Les Mis Daily: https://lesmisdaily.substack.com/

Frankenstein Weekly: https://frankweekly.substack.com/

Check out our Bookshop page: https://bookshop.org/shop/theinksink

We usually see the other end of this, but here’s one where men answer the question women get often: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskMen/comments/wvecz1/what_is_something_women_who_write_male_characters/

Amid the deprioritization of news on FB, small U.S. news sources band together to start negotiating for bargaining power on Google and FB: https://pressgazette.co.uk/journalism-competition-and-preservation-act-2/

In the saga of FB moving away from news: the news tab is losing its humans: https://pressgazette.co.uk/facebook-news-tab-uk-automated/

Journalists/news orgs weigh in on the twitter drama: https://pressgazette.co.uk/twitter-blue-tick-journalists-publishers/

Local high school paper grapples with community censorship: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/a-school-paused-its-student-newspaper-after-an-lgbtq-pride-issue

Since ads are so important to the publishing industry, we always have to keep one eye on the marketing trends.

These news CEOs talked in the UK about how the advertisers seem to be averse to real news: https://pressgazette.co.uk/ad-blocklists-reach-buzzfeed/

This article made a splash and shows exactly how marketing is broken right now: https://www.wired.com/story/bots-online-advertising/

New imprint from Disney focusing on Black joy : https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/90838-kwame-mbalia-to-head-new-imprint-for-disney.html

The Sokal Hoax: https://www.chronicle.com/article/bait-and-switch/

One solution to the preprint crisis: encouraging public comment to add context: https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/02/28/guest-post-preprint-feedback-is-here-lets-make-it-constructive-and-fast/

Journal publisher thinking about free access: "is this anything?" https://publishingperspectives.com/2022/04/academic-edition-annual-reviews-opens-journals-on-subscribe-to-open/

What happens when open access scholarship turns into stolen work? https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2021/07/08/what-happens-when-you-find-your-open-access-phd-thesis-for-sale-on-amazon/

+ Support trans authors on Bookshop! https://bookshop.org/lists/books-by-trans-authors-the-mary-sue

List of books by trans authors (from the Mary Sue): https://bookshop.org/lists/books-by-trans-authors-the-mary-sue

NaNoWriMo coming up! https://store.nanowrimo.org/pages/your-impact

This list is from 2020, but still good: Nonprofits supporting literacy: https://bookriot.com/literacy-charities/

Judge blocks PRH/S&S Merger: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/penguin-random-house-simon-schuster.html

Our previous coverage on the PRH/S&S merger:

Industry observers talking about the trial hearings: News: We Want S***** Batman

The trial hearings themselves: Midnight Releases and Publishing Drama | Episode 16 | The Ink Sink

We talked about the hearing being set in a rapid-fire news section: Episode 3: The Spine Collector

Federal open access mandate gets its teeth filed: https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/10/13/thoughts-and-observations-on-the-ostp-responses-to-our-interview-questions/

We had celebrated the announcement when it was made public: News: We Want S***** Batman

The 12th GW Ethics in Publishing Conference: https://gwpress.manifoldapp.org/projects/12th-gw-ethics-in-publishing-conference

Nobel prize goes to Annie Ernaux: https://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=4333&share=true#m57844

See Harrow the Ninth and the art of the game Okami on our Bookshop list: https://bookshop.org/lists/what-we-re-reading-20648183-3934-47b4-aebd-e8457216d11f

Or, as they asked in Avenue Q, what do you do with a BA in English?

If you're interested in business analysis certifications, you can read more about those here. 

We can't link to the editorial presentation on reading and writing skills in other industries, but you can look at other webinars from the Society for Editors Academy here. 

And if you have any topics you'd like us to cover, please email us at InkSinkPodcast@gmail.com. 

A good look at some of the copyrighted works expiring soon and what culture could look like in the future: https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/what-expiring-copyright-protections-mean-for-our-media-landscape/

Heartbreaking and hard to read, but necessary: https://californiahealthline.org/news/article/librarians-workplace-changing-social-work/ 

We won't have a verdict in the DOJ vs PRH/S&S trail for a bit, but NYT summed up some of the takeaways: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/19/books/prh-penguin-random-house-trial.html 

Takeaways from some other industry observers: https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/xewyw7/discussion_how_is_everyone_handling_the_proposed/ 

Research is about to get a lot cheaper, will it solve the journal crisis? https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-historic-moment-new-guidance-requires-federally-funded-research-to-be-open-access 

Inflation and paper costs hit publishers hard: https://trends.spiny.ai/print-price-hikes/ 

Our Bookshop page: https://bookshop.org/shop/theinksink

You can see both versions of Stardust on our Bookshop.org page here. 

We hope you enjoy!

Our episode on the slow death of local news: https://anchor.fm/the-ink-sink/episodes/17-Your-Neighborhood-Geeks-The-Sad-State-of-Your-Local-News-e1o765i

Our "Dracula Daily" episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/pUlJHstbxjQ

Homestuck: https://www.homestuck.com/

Our "Kali Lives to Spite Ezra Pound" short: https://youtube.com/shorts/mPzoFV-kGgk?feature=share

From the guy who brought you the viral "no one wants to work anymore" thread, comes the next one: Kids read too much: https://twitter.com/paulisci/status/1555906361065541633

Recent discourse asked whether we still publish controversial novels like Lolita. Here's a measured response: https://countercraft.substack.com/p/why-do-people-think-scandalous-novels

Our episode on banned books, where we talked about Skyhorse: https://anchor.fm/the-ink-sink/episodes/Episode-5-Banned-Books-Bash-e1fpp5a

Another angle, should publishing companies rethink what they publish in light of rising costs? https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/09/08/books-are-physically-changing-because-of-inflation

Interesting numbers e-readers vs books from a climate perspective: https://www.popsci.com/environment/books-ereader-sustainability/

B&N deprioritizing hardcovers? https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/90151-daunt-addresses-furor-over-middle-grade-fiction-buying-policy.html

Related, Amazon orders fewer books from publishers for its fulfillment warehouses: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/90164-amazon-stands-by-books.html

New Lambda Literary head: https://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=4316&share=true#m57584

Bookshop list of Lambda's 2022 winners: https://bookshop.org/lists/lambda-literary-2022-honorees

What We're Reading: https://bookshop.org/lists/what-we-re-reading-20648183-3934-47b4-aebd-e8457216d11f

“The Allure and Effects of the True Crime Genre” by Geralyn Jones: https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/acadfest/2022/all/198/

Our episode on fact-checking: https://anchor.fm/the-ink-sink/episodes/11-The-First-Fact-Checker-Quit-After-Just-a-Few-Months-e1kqg8s

Why it matters: local news is instrumental in things like missing person cases: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/12/jashyah-moore-missing-person-found/

What is lost when we lose local journalists: appreciation for local figures: https://mailchi.mp/poynter/k6pg1xp7fq?e=e5489eccb5

More on the importance of local news, this time from Ukraine: https://pressgazette.co.uk/ukraine-war-local-media/

State of local news in 2022: https://pressgazette.co.uk/news-deserts-research-newspapers-closed/

Trust in the news: https://news.gallup.com/poll/394817/media-confidence-ratings-record-lows.aspx

Impact of government investment on local newsrooms across the world: https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/how-to-pay-for-reliable-information-new-strategies-and-initiatives/

Google investing in local newsletters: https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/reach-creates-email-innovation-lab-partners-with-google-news-initiative-to-turbocharge-newsletters/

Cost consideration: reporters are expensive. Some newsrooms turn to robots; https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/robots-produce-the-information-journalists-do-the-journalism-mcclatchy-goes-real-estate-robotic/

Axios investing in local newsletters: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/business/media/axios-local.html

Independent news media has options, but not many: https://pressgazette.co.uk/future-of-local-news-independent-publishers/

60 Minutes takes on Alden Capital, the corporation buying up and gutting local news: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/local-news-financial-firms-60-minutes-video-2022-02-27/

More from the private capital front lines: https://mailchi.mp/poynter/k2w5awaw67?e=e5489eccb5

We want to hear from you! Reach out to us at InkSinkPodcast@gmail.com! 

Our sources this week: 

A History of the midnight release party: https://bookriot.com/history-of-the-midnight-release-party/

Please please please please: https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2022/a-26-year-old-entrepreneur-takes-a-fresh-shot-at-selling-news-one-story-at-a-time/

Penguin random house and Simon & Schuster begin their fight with the DOJ: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/90032-doj-v-prh-all-our-coverage.html

Another angle from NYT: This is really about competing with Amazon: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/02/technology/penguin-random-house-amazon.html

The discourse from Courtney Milan (author and industry commentator) on Twitter: https://twitter.com/courtneymilan/status/1556673050895994880

Pearson hasn’t been able to take advantage of the secondary textbook market up til now, but plans to leverage NFTs to make a profit down the road: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/02/pearson-plans-to-sell-its-textbooks-as-nfts

Online book clubs working to decolonize publishing: https://lithub.com/how-one-group-of-global-south-writers-is-decolonizing-literature/

Stardust by Neil Gaiman: https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9780063070714

Witch's Brew by Shawn Engel and Steven Nichols: https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781454942863

Last Book on the Left by Zebrowski, Kissel, Parks: https://bookshop.org/a/55633/9781328566317

Journal of Popular Music Studies: https://online.ucpress.edu/jpms/article/32/4/75/114312/Must-Be-Love-On-The-Brain-Feminist-responses-to

Studies in American Humor: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/studamerhumor.5.2.0288

EVERY TIME, THIS STORY JUST GETS MORE TANTILIZING. What is the plea agreement? What is the compensation? What was his fucking motive?????? https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jul/14/alleged-book-thief-filippo-bernardini-may-avoid-trial-in-the-us

From AdWeek: Facebook's traffic to news sources has fallen: https://www.adweek.com/media/facebook-traffic-publishers-changed/#

Some Surprising Good News: Bookstores Are Booming and Becoming More Diverse: More than 300 bookstores have opened in the past couple of years — a revival that is meeting a demand for “real recommendations from real people.”

From NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/10/books/bookstores-diversity-pandemic.html

Another take from the Christian Science Monitor: https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2022/0617/Indie-bookstore-boom-turns-page-to-a-more-diverse-America

Lots to unpack here: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/89818-is-the-book-sales-boom-finally-over.html

Related: Publishing Perspectives reports that the LGBTQ book market has grown: https://publishingperspectives.com/2022/06/npd-group-united-states-lgbtq-book-sales-are-surging/

And onto libraries: The Internet Archive is a bit of a renegade entity, but the principles it stands on are worth defending, writes The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/internet-archive-lawsuit-libraries

In other library news: We can't overstate how much book bans are STILL having effects on libraries: https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/diversity-inclusion/3567597-library-temporarily-closes-after-resignations-over-lgbtq-book-challenges/

Ada Limón Named U.S. Poet Laureate: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/awards-and-prizes/article/89829-ada-limon-named-u-s-poet-laureate.html

Maris Kreizman will be the new books editor at vulture: https://twitter.com/mariskreizman/status/1549392358353117187

What we're reading: https://bookshop.org/lists/what-we-re-reading-20648183-3934-47b4-aebd-e8457216d11f
(Note, Bookshop doesn't seem to have Goldmayne in its system. Here's a link to it on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18134972-goldmayne)

Link to the substack: https://draculadaily.substack.com/about

Slate interview: https://slate.com/culture/2022/05/dracula-daily-bram-stoker-book-newsletter-jonathan-harker.html

Dumb Cuneiform: https://dumbcuneiform.com/#faq

Know Your Meme tracked down some viral thread dates: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/dracula-daily

Socks thread: https://cheezburger.com/10036229/beautiful-story-of-socks-finding-her-forever-home-twitter-thread

Recommendations from our survey respondents:

Infinity Train: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8146754/

The Owl House: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8050756/

Les Mis Daily: https://lesmisdaily.substack.com/

Frankenstein Weekly: https://frankweekly.substack.com/

Booksellers leader rallies for abortion rights: https://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=4263&share=true#m56778

Comprehensive roundup on the publishers' side from PW: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/89727-post-roe-publishers-scramble-to-meet-the-political-moment.html

"The Digital News Report for 2022," the much-anticipated annual digital journalism review from Reuters, has been released. Key takeaways from What's New in Publishing: https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/digital-news-report-2022-publisher-challenges-and-solutions/

Another article and view from WNiP: https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/burning-questions-the-2022-digital-news-report-answered-and-a-few-it-created/

And some hand-wringing about young people not doing news the old way from stalwart Nieman Lab: https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/06/the-differences-seem-to-be-growing-a-look-at-the-rising-generation-of-news-consumers

Jamilah King will be managing editor at Buzzfeed: https://twitter.com/jamilahking/status/1545061499097563136

Jennifer Kho the new executive editor at the Chicago Sun-Times: https://chicago.suntimes.com/business/2022/6/2/23152077/sun-times-jennifer-kho-executive-editor

Take a look at what we're reading on our Bookshop page: https://bookshop.org/shop/theinksink

The Rise and Fall of Facts (Columbia Journalism Review): https://www.cjr.org/special_report/rise-and-fall-of-fact-checking.php

Here’s How the First Fact-Checkers Were Able to Do Their Jobs Before the Internet (Time): https://time.com/4858683/fact-checking-history/

To Fix Fake News, Look To Yellow Journalism (JSTOR): https://daily.jstor.org/to-fix-fake-news-look-to-yellow-journalism/

Plus, take a look at what we're reading on our Bookshop page: https://bookshop.org/shop/theinksink

AI finds that male-coded characters are four times more common in literature than female-coded characters: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/apr/27/four-times-more-male-characters-in-literature-than-female-research-suggests

Deep dive on the current state of Meta and Alphabet's news partnerships: https://pressgazette.co.uk/facebook-news-payments-meta-unfriend-news/

PRH reorganizes licensed content into single imprint: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/89341-random-house-brings-licensed-titles-under-one-roof.html

The book banning convo has gone meta: https://www.shelf-awareness.com/theshelf/2022-05-24/_unburnable_edition_of_the_handmaid_s_tale_to_be_auctioned_for_anti-censorship_fundraiser.html

New EIC at Slate: https://www.axios.com/2022/05/11/slate-hillary-frey-new-editor-in-chief

Percy Jackson and Mass Effect in our Bookshop storefront: https://bookshop.org/shop/theinksink

Link up with us on our brand new YouTube channel! 

Plus, check out what we're reading on our Bookshop page: https://bookshop.org/shop/theinksink

Ten years since the iconic Cool Girl monologue: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a40079306/gone-girl-legacy/

VA lawsuit says that books with mature themes should require a parent's consent before purchase: https://www.salon.com/2022/05/20/book-ban-jumps-from-public-schools-to-private-stores-like-barnes-and-noble/

Voices from prisons, where books are tightly controlled, often for arbitrary reasons: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/book-bans-prison-cut-inmates-lifeline-world-rcna29097

A history of gender-exclusionary speculative fiction here, and a good breakdown of the current market. She also defends herself: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/may/25/sandra-newman-female-utopian-fiction

The swan song of BuzzFeed Investigations: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/05/a-battered-buzzfeed-news-forges-on

Ukraine fatigue reminding us that news is a business: https://pressgazette.co.uk/ukrainecast-bbc-podcast/

List of scifi and fantasy from trans authors (not all feature trans characters, but this is a good time to support our trans author friends): https://www.themarysue.com/science-fiction-and-fantasy-books-by-trans-authors-sff-poc/

Canada considering legislation to require Google and Meta to pay for news featured on their platforms: https://pressgazette.co.uk/canada-online-news-act-google-meta-facebook/

Connecticut joins the state legislatures trying to regulate library costs with publishers: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/88625-connecticut-introduces-library-e-book-bill.html

Great quote:

"Libraries regularly pay four to five times what consumers pay for the same e-books and then are forced to re-buy the same titles every year, costing taxpayers thousands of dollars over the life of a single e-book and making a robust e-book collection out of reach for many libraries."

Axios adding local journalism desks: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/business/media/axios-local.html

Business update: VC money in news is getting more and more cautious: https://pressgazette.co.uk/venture-capital-vc-funding-media/

The Tolkien site update:

New artttttt:

thebookseller.com/news/news/tolkien-estate-updates-website-with-previously-unseen-content

Related to our fanfic episode:

Strong language surrounding fanfic (they're not pro fanfic)

https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/t30i0y/the_tolkien_estate_doesnt_seem_to_love_the_fans/

Heck yeah Sabrina! https://www.nytco.com/press/sabrina-tavernise-joins-the-daily-as-a-host/

Jamie Stockwell killin it at axios:

https://www.axios.com/axios-jamie-stockwell-executive-editor-local-news-f229013f-2f57-42b9-b7e8-9687ae58b875.html

Anne Frank book controversy: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/31/apology-over-dutch-book-that-claimed-to-identify-anne-franks-betrayer

A Tennessee school board has ruled that the graphic novel MAUS should be taken out of the eighth-grade curriculum: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/01/sales-maus-soar-tennessee-school-board-ban.html

We've talked about pre-printed scientific articles before. We've said that they're vaguely untrustworthy, but now we have some hard numbers on exactly how their conclusions change from preprint to publication: https://journalistsresource.org/health/two-studies-examine-preprints/

Team up to publish black Christian voices: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/religion/article/88432-hccp-urban-ministries-launch-a-platform-for-black-voices.html

Related, Christian trade books reportedly doing gangbusters: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/religion/article/88492-sales-rise-for-christian-retailers.html