Technology • Innovation • Publishing — Issue #222

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Innovation

ChatGPT: The Machine Will Speak With You Now

nymag.com 
DALL-E’s fun, impressive, and somewhat unsettling chatbot sibling is open to the public, and it does a surprisingly good impression of an actual person. Here are some examples of what it can do.

How to… use AI to generate ideas — oneusefulthing.substack.com 
AI can make you more creative right now, and here are some ways to do it…

‘Create with Alexa,’ an AI-powered storytelling buddy, helps kids create unique stories. — www.zdnet.com

#AI

Neuralink’s Upgraded Brain Chip Hopes to Help the Blind See and the Paralyzed Walk — www.cnet.com

Elon Musk’s startup, which makes an implant that connects computers to brains, hopes to begin human trials in six months.

Bloomsbury uses ‘immersive’ hologram technology to promote Ukrainian schoolgirl’s diary — www.thebookseller.com 
Bloomsbury is using “immersive” hologram technology for its Christmas marketing campaign for You Don’t Know What War Is by Yeva Skalietska.

Technology

The top three NFT trends for publishers in 2023 — digitalcontentnext.org 
Talk of NFTs has hovered around the media landscape like a dark, disorienting cloud for some, and a shiny, new opportunity for others.

Redirecting links from another Mastodon instance — www.macstories.net

RT @viticci Are you playing around with Mastodon but are confused by how to view accounts and posts from another instance on *your* instance? I made Masto-Redirect, a shortcut that takes care of redirecting these links for you. Set it up once, use it everywhere.

Google is testing new Rewarded Ad Gate beta program for publishers

searchengineland.com 
The program will give publishers an opportunity to monetize their most engaged users.

You can use an AI Time Machine to see what you’d look like in different eras throughout history — www.zdnet.com 
A TikTok trend popularized MyHeritage’s AI Time Machine, which generates realistic photos of what you would have looked like in past eras.

Spotify debuts WonderWrapped music space on Roblox — venturebeat.com

As an addition to Spotify Island, Spotify is introducing Spotify Island: WonderWrapped as a new space for fans to engage with music artists on Roblox.

What YouTube’s official entry into podcasting means for the industry

simonowens.substack.com 
The video platform is finally dedicating real resources to growing its podcast offerings.

How Amazon shopping ads are disguised as real results — www.washingtonpost.com

HT @jafurtado It’s not your imagination — Most of what you see at first on Amazon is now an ad.

New York Signs Two-Year Crypto Mining Moratorium Into Law

decrypt.co

New York became the first state to instate a temporary moratorium on new fossil fuel-powered cryptocurrency mining operations for proof of work.

Meta fined $276 million over Facebook data leak involving more than 533 million users

www.theverge.com 
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission fined Meta $276 million following an investigation into an April 2021 data leak that exposed the information of over 533 million users.

Massive Twitter data breach was far worse than reported, reveal security researchers

9to5mac.com

A massive Twitter data breach last year, exposing more than five million phone numbers and email addresses, was worse than initially reported. We’ve been shown evidence that the same security vulnerability was exploited by multiple bad actors, and the hacked data has been offered for sale on the dark web by several sources.

Hate Speech’s Rise on Twitter Under Elon Musk Is Unprecedented, Researchers Find

www.nytimes.com

Slurs against Black Americans and gay men are up on Twitter. Antisemitic posts soared more than 61%. New findings provide the most comprehensive picture to date of how conversations on Twitter have changed since Elon Musk acquired the site.

The EU has warned Elon Musk that Twitter could be banned in Europe unless the billionaire abides by its strict rules on content moderation

www.ft.com

Publishing & Media

2022 FutureBook Conference: Publishing’s ‘Common Ground — publishingperspectives.com

HT @craicer The 2022 FutureBook Conference in London was themed on cultural considerations in the industry alongside business realities.

Better support for disabled people in publishing — www.independentpublishersguild.com

MT @ipghq How can publishers improve the recruitment and support of disabled people? Some notes from a recent IPG meeting with the brilliant@KateNashOBE @MyPurpleSpace

U.S. Booksellers Embrace Books in Spanish — www.publishersweekly.com

HT @38enso Driven by the spread of language-immersion schools, bilingual families, and other factors, many stores are expanding their Spanish-language offerings for young readers.

The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment Conducts First-Ever Economic Analysis of NYC’s Publishing Industry

www.nyc.gov

MT @MadeinNY The study highlights NYC’s thriving industry, supporting 95K jobs, $11B in wages & $34B in economic output in 2020.

HarperCollins UK CEO Charlie Redmayne on Costs, Pricing, Sales in Book Publishing

publishingperspectives.com

Interesting on the economics of #bookpublishing from Charlie Redmayne at HarperCollins UK

Hachette UK to raise salary for entry-level roles and give staff £1,000 cost of living payment — www.thebookseller.com 
Hachette UK has announced that from 1st January 2023, its starting salary for entry-level roles in publishing functions will increase, and that staff will receive a £1,000 cost of living payment that month.

HarperCollins Strike Continues With No Sign of an End — bookandfilmglobe.com

The HarperCollins Union, representing over 250 employees in editorial, sales, publicity, design, legal and marketing, has been on strike since November 10th.

As Spotify audiobooks launches in more à la carte markets, Kobo joins Audible in bucking the industry-imagined all-you-can-eat-is-history trend

thenewpublishingstandard.com

#audiobooks

For Ukrainian Refugee Kids, Books Offer Hope — www.publishersweekly.com

Thousands of Ukrainian refugee children are about to spend their first Christmas away from home; publishers’ efforts continue to ensure that books in their own language will comfort them through a holiday season in exile.

Students who have author visits are twice as likely to read above their expected age level

glenthornelrc.blogspot.com

HT @lucasjmaxwell

We Need Diverse Books Launches #BooksSaveLives Initiative Against Censorship — www.publishersweekly.com

HT @PWKidsBookshelf WNDB is launching the #BooksSaveLives campaign, which will give as much as $10,000 in grants to schools and libraries in underserved communities that they can purchase challenged and banned books for their collections.

Ashcroft’s book ban proposal slammed by ACLU

www.stltoday.com

The new Missouri law makes it a misdemeanor w to a yr in jail for educators to give k-12 students books w photos, drawings, or visual depictions that are sexually explicit has added a nuance which directly impacts 100’s of award-winning books #bookbanning

The Best Books of 2022 — www.nytimes.com

HT @TinaJordanNYT The staff of The New York Times Book Review choose the year’s standout fiction and nonfiction.

The 10 Best Books of 2022 — www.wsj.com 
Our selection of the finest fiction and nonfiction of the year.

Our Favorite Books of the Year — www.oprahdaily.com

HT @PublishersLunch 2022 has been a boon for books, with reimaginings of pasts and futures from Hanya Yanagihara and Hernan Diaz to National Book Award winners Imani Perry and Tess Gunty.

Books We Love — apps.npr.org 
Here are 400+ great reads from 2022 handpicked just for you by NPR staff and trusted critics.

Best books 2022: fiction, nonfiction, comics, and some that defy categorizing. — slate.com 
According to Slate’s books editor.

Women of color face “extraordinary levels of exclusion” in news organizations, report reveals — www.fipp.com

MT @FIPPWorld Women of color are experiencing “extraordinary levels of exclusion” that make them “invisible” in news organizations — a new report produced by @gatesfoundation

Resources & Opportunities

Penguin Hotline — www.penguin.com

Are you #BookedForTheHolidays? Consult the experts at the #PenguinHotlineto receive a personalized list of recommendations from one of our staff members — you might get me! #TeamPRH

WMG Virtual Event on Finding & Growing Your Podcast Audience

www.womensmediagroup.org

Join @WMG_NYC 12/8 at noon ET for a virtual event on understanding podcast audiences. Featuring Christy Mirabal (Senior Director of Audience Growth at SiriusXM), Maggie Taylor (Director of Marketing at Pushkin Industries) and Cecilia Lei (host and producer of Fifth and Mission, The San Francisco Chronicle’s daily news podcast). The panel is moderated by Golda Arthur (executive producer and podcast consultant). Learn how to figure out who’s listening to your show, how to build a relationship with those listeners, and grow that audience. Free for WMG members, $15 for non-members.