Some get away with it because they’re good in other ways as well. Winning cures everything.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. I don’t care for YA but had to read something for Bingo. Liked the first one so much I read the second and watched the show on the Netflix.

Don’t try to find out their address for mail unless they have expressly disclosed a P.O Box number for fan mail. If they have social media write to them there or if they have disclosed an email address then emails are okay.

In my experience those that don’t want to be contacted by readers wont have a way for you to contact them anyway or they won’t respond.

I personally couldn’t live with the fact I marked it as ‘read’ when I didn’t.

Book budgets differ depending on their projected return & editor. 10k or a million, point is you’re not paying for that book.

I know publishers don’t create books but they pay the authors, editors, artists, production, marketing and distribution. If an online global archive can just make copies and give them away that affects the whole industry right down to the author.

It doesn’t matter if it’s an ebook (which these copies weren’t), at the end of the day they were giving out free copies of peoples work.

The IA is neither a physical building or an online library. Libraries share copies they have purchased or were given or can use freely (public domain) , they don’t make extra copies from an original and share them.

The Realm of the Elderlings U.S covers are some of the ugliest I’ve ever seen.

Also U.S publishers have a formatting consistency problem. Like why would you change the format half way through a series? One of the most annoying and aesthetically ugly things to look at on a book shelf. U.K publishers know that their buyers hate that sort of stuff. U.S publishers may not care? Or sell more digitally anyway? Idk.

‘Personal use’ not to all and sundry. And publishers hate it because it’s pirating a product THEY paid for. When was the last time YOU put up the 10s of thousands or even millions of dollars it costs to publish books??? I don’t know much about computers, what I do know is, if you’re sharing my book, cool, but don’t take advantage of me. Pay me for my work for those extra copies. Or in this case, stop sharing my shit for free just because there are a lack of regulations online as of yet.

Edit: and if it’s for a good cause like the library shutdowns over covid (even though most libraries are online anyway), like at least ask first, damn. People just think they are entitled to everyone else’s work. Like I didn’t write a book for free, the publisher didn’t produce & market it for free, the original copy wasn’t free, so why should a global archive that’s not even a real library be able to duplicate it into a different format and share it for free?

No it isn’t any different (still illegal), but I don’t think the biggest publishers in the country are concerned about you as a singular person, maybe if you started a global online archive that was sharing untold amount of titles to untold amounts of people for free without permission, then maybe they’d take notice.

I don’t think it’s pointless, it obviously has a point but I do think it’s childish. Not in a way that’s immature, but that it has all the classic tropes of child/middle grade literature. However, just because something is ‘childish’ doesn’t mean it cant be enjoyed by adults. It’s accessibility is probably a lot of the reason why it’s a continual best seller.

Sure, but not doing in goodwill isn’t against the law (were they even asked?). This isn’t a case of what is morally right but what is objectively against the law, which copying somebody’s book and sharing it en masse without paying for the extra copies in circulation is. No different from “sharing” music & movies online.

Sounds like a no brainer to me. Just because you’re a registered not for profit org doesn’t mean you can just start pirating

I don’t think it will, at least not in our lifetimes. AI will become better and used more, but artists need to create. The responsibility is on corporations to not rely and replace creatives with AI, which is what I don’t trust.

Depends how much they use it. Some writers will use it as a sort of foundation or skeleton for a story and then write over it.

I don’t really mind it so long as writers get the credit and get paid accordingly.

This is a negotiable with the Screenwriters Guild at the moment. They’re worried Studios may be able to slither their way out of paying screenwriters their dues for scripts whose foundations come from AI. A genuine concern.

Then we also have issues arises from artists vs AI generated book covers. No doubt once the tech becomes good enough (which isn’t that far off) publishing houses will take advantage and artist drawn book covers will become a novelty.

For books, my personal opinion is if a writer uses AI they should disclose it, but that’s just me.

Because it sells. All the books you mentioned have been big sellers. I’m not so weirded out by the authors who are obviously writing to market, but the readers who make them best sellers.

I’m currently finishing up the Three Body Problem trilogy and it’s been excellent sci fi wise. It has high concepts and gets very jargon-y, but Cixin Liu (and I suspect Ken Liu, his English translator) do a good job of ending all the science fiction hoo haa with a story and plot you can understand and follow easily. The dimension stuff is particularly insane.

However, my favourite sci fi will always be Hyperion by Dan Simmons.

Well that’s been a thing for a long time too. TikTok is just the newest platform of an age old marketing strategy. Use to be ‘New York Times Best Sellers’ tables and ‘Oprah Winfrey Bookclub Recommendation’ stands. And it would literally be the same old same old trendy book that month.

This has been a thing for books nearly forever. It’s not new because of TikTok.

Pop fiction has for a long time been more popular than more serious literature. I mean, it’s in the name, ‘popular’ fiction. Even among avid reading adults and older people who have been reading for decades, trashy consumerist novels are extremely popular. Not to bag on romance, but there’s a reason it’s the biggest selling genre.

Most young people mature with experience and they soon learn that these tropes are just tropes. Also, if they want erotica we live in a world now that pornhub is easier & quicker to access & navigate than Goodreads.

So I wouldn’t worry too much about it. It’s not the books being marketed that’s changed but just the manner in which they are now being marketed.

I dont use booktok though so I may be under estimating it? Idk

FitzChivalry Farseer. If you know you know .

I read it as an adult so I thought it was highly overrated and basic. To be honest I thought it was actually meant for middle graders. Like I think it would work really well as an introduction to literary fiction for 12 year olds.

I’ve said this before concerning what I believed to be cultural appropriation or something akin to it. I’ve also said similar things about a book that depicts elements of colonisation and native peoples.

In both instances though I was the one who was being criticised and invalidated for having come into those books with a different perspective/experience.

I think so long as this topic can be discussed civility it’s fine. But I also think there’s nothing wrong with saying, look, you’re not from this experience so the flags are going right over your head.

I wish Deadhouse Gates (from Malazan) was a movie. Mainly the Chain of Dogs storyline would be peak cinema.

And I wish Dark Crystal franchise and HBOs The Wire was novelised.

Is there a book out there about how not to be rude and elitist? If there is, I recommend it to you.

Wow.

Your comments read really ableist, privileged and insensitive.

You don’t know what people need to help them.

Suggesting someone with severe disabilities a book that is basically ‘just get over it and be happy - you actually haven’t lost anything’ is rude and entitled.

Books are no guarantee of fixing anything.