iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Rob Palk @robpalk.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It's quite funny that the AI scam industry have decided the biggest vainest most gullible marks are obviously novelists

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Ian Duhig @ianduhig.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Happy National Poetry Day!

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This is such a good idea! More festivals should do it for their featured authors.

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Jonny Morris @jonnymorris.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

What AI is very good at is simulating the process of being a commissioner; you get to make arbitrary changes, and the creatives have to go away and make it work, and then you get to take all the credit. So maybe TV commissioners could be replaced by AI.

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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Dada perfection

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The Bookseller @thebookseller.com · 28/09/2026

We are pushing authors into a culture of AI secrecy, writes author and editor Madeleine F White. 👇

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We are pushing authors into a culture of AI secrecy

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Every time this happens – the accusation, the doubt – it erodes trust in every human author. The industry needs to get a grip. Stop using algorithmic analysis / Pangram. Stop relying on 'trust'.

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Nadine Matheson @nadinematheson.com · 24/09/2026

Here we go again. Anothet author accused of using Ai after an idiot ran his novel through Pangram without his consent. So fed up of this. www.thebookseller.com/news/canadia...

thebookseller.com

Canadian author Thélyson Orélien accused of using AI to write award-winning novel

Thélyson Orélien has been accused of using AI to write most of his award winning first novel, C’était ça ou mourir (It was that or die)

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chloesackur.bsky.social @chloesackur.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Reading about Booker judging in the 70s-80s. I often think there’s a savagery to a lot of online discourse but publishing was quite a rough and tumble world in 1983 (read to the end)

The archive also unveils the pitfalls of using an Autocue: in 1983, the novelist Fay Weldon was chairing the judges, and used an Autocue to give a speech at the ceremony that mercilessly attacked the publishing industry. “We are the raw material of your trade. You do tend to forget it, you know. You forget that books need writers: that there are very few of us; that we are quite tough, but perhaps not as tough as you think,” Weldon said. “I think you’d do without us altogether if you could.”

Weldon had intended to end on a softer note, but the ceremony’s power was cut by trade-union action at 10pm and her autocue went black. In the archive, she recalls, “just before I got to the 'you are all honourable men' bit. And so because you are reading it, you don't know where you are, so I just sat down and said, 'That is really all I have to say.' So they didn't get that bit. And they were so incensed. And the head of the publishing union came over and hit my agent. It was a wonderful evening!”

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Also Old English: His hand is strong. Late in life he went to Rome. He swam west in storm and wind and frost. Is his wife here yet? OK, I modernised the spelling for the last bit.

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Gobsmacked by this. Slusser was a titan in the field.

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Worth checking the allocations in your Anthropic Settlement... Just found one of my UK publishers listed as a claimant (they didn't publish in the US) and my US publisher listed three times as three different imprint names!

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

need to know for non-US authors claiming from the Anthropic Settlement without a taxpayer number: "If you are not a US resident, provide Form W-8BEN: www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/.... This allows you to certify nonresident status. Upload your documentation in the update information portal."

irs.gov

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Victoria Strauss @victoriastrauss.com · 15/09/2026

The @authorsguild.org has updated its comprehensive article on the Anthropic copyright settlement and the many claims discrepancies thereof with info about publisher corrections and publisher contact email addresses authorsguild.org/news/importa...

authorsguild.org

Important Information Regarding Anthropic Copyright Settlement Claim Notices

Update, September 14, 2026: The Authors Guild has gathered further information regarding the Anthropic allocation dispute process. We have updated this post with additional guidance on disputes involv...

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

To be fair, a hefty proportion of quotations listed on the pre-AI internet were also misattributed or invented. One of the joys of writing is hunting down original sources to check – and then what you discover along the way.

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

pre-AI dictionaries of quotations are going to be premium products.

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Adam Morgan @adamm0rgan.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

If you work for a book publisher that has introduced AI at any point in the publishing process, I'm working on a story and would like you speak with you, on-record or off-. Same goes if you're an author and you've witnessed your publisher using AI at any point in the publishing process.

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Bayeux Tapestry? I raise you the Tapestry of the Apocalypse at Angers. (And it's actually a tapestry too.)

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Every writer and musician: well who'd have thought it?

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Jeremy Noel-Tod @jntod.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

The offer of £££ of *e-books* to review an academic manuscript is, I submit, a piss-take by an academic press

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Andrew Crowther @andrewcrowther.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I always suspected the title of his later novel “Nice Work” was him getting a bit of his own back at the Gershwin estate for that…

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

In my novel Bournville I wanted to quote eight words of a Robert Wyatt lyric ('How can I rise if you don't fall?'). Robert (of course) was fine with it but it was his former publishers we had to deal with. Eventually Penguin negotiated them down to £500 but their first quote was £4,450.

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John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Blake Morrison on what it cost him (not his publisher) to include lines from pop lyrics in his 2007 novel South of the River.

My editor was more cautious and at the last minute someone from the publishing house helpfully secured the permissions on my behalf. I still have the invoices. For one line of Jumping Jack Flash: €500. For one line of Wonderwall': €535.
For one line of 'When I'm Sixty-Four': £735. For two lines of 'I Shot the Sheriff: €1,000. Plus several more, of which only George Michael's 'Fast Love' came in under £200. Plus VAT. Total outlay: €4,401.75. A typical advance for a literary novel by a first-time author wouldn't meet the cost. And doubtless permission fees are far more expensive these days - the novel came out in 2007.

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I'm thinking the key rights here are those for copyright infringement damages, so we're back to 50%...

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Is this the first-ever double-ghosted book? (Given that 'James Patterson' is actually a team of writers.)

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Victoria Strauss @victoriastrauss.com · 03/09/2026

I know I already posted about this...but to reiterate: Anthropic copyright settlement authors, PLEASE contact me (Writer Beware) if your publisher is making a claim on a book whose rights have reverted, or claiming anything other than a 50/50 split on an in-contract book. beware@sfwa.org

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Stephen Collins @stephencollins.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Remember: it could be someone you know.

[Scene is a parody of a 1970s Public Information Film. A young girl is going home from school.]

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[She leaves the school gates].

VOICEOVER:

The world today
is full of people.

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You meet lots of them every day.

[The girl crosses the road with the help of a LOLLIPOP MAN]

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LOLLIPOP MAN says ’to camera’ [girl’s POV]:

Mind ‘ow you go, love.

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But every time you meet one,

[She gets on a bus]

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BUS DRIVER [also talking to camera]:

That’ll be 40p, please

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[She enters a sweet shop]

You must always think to yourself:

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[The kindly looking woman behind the counter hands her a bag of pick n mix]

KINDLY WOMAN:
There y’are, sweet’art...

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[Voiceover again]:

Could *they* be a person who leaves one-star reviews for things when they get sent the wrong item?

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[The woman picks up a smartphone to write something]

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[Cut to a view of her phone screen, it is an Amazon review page for Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro]:

Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro
[one star]
THIS ISN’T A PRIT STICK

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[Woman looks ‘to camera’ at the girl, sinisterly]

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[Girl’s terrified face behind the ad’s final text line]:

Always have one-star-reviewers-of-things-for-not-being-other-things sense.

[Ends]

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JudithFlanders @judithflanders.co.uk · 28/08/2026

Sadly, I no longer have the book but Julian Barnes’ Letters from London mentions an unnamed author who is ‘unavoidably detained’ & fails to attend a talk he was scheduled to appear at. The index entry for that page: ‘McEwan, Ian, unavoidably goes skiing.’

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Dan Kaszeta FRHistS @dankaszeta.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

But nothing beats the obstetrics textbook wherein one of the authors made his wife do the index, so she slips this one in:

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

One tries not to add to the burden of climate angst but anyone who has been on a glacier knows that the scale of this is... unimaginable.

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Making Tax Difficult sorry Digital question: can any freelancers recommend the simplest possible bridging software to get from my basic Excel sheet records to HMRC submission? I'm only interested in the free options. MyTaxDigital? Monzo? Free Agent? Clear Books Free?

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Dr Lindsey Fitzharris @drlindseyfitz.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Yeah, exactly. I mean, in theory, we could show prior drafts etc. But what a ball ache! All this invisible labor being asked of us when we're the victims of AI scraping in the first place!

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Amazon? Doing something that's bad for books? Surely not!

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The Bookseller @thebookseller.com · 21/07/2026

The US District Court for the Northern District of California has granted final approval of the parties’ class settlement in Bartz v. Anthropic. 👇

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Anthropic’s $1.5 billion copyright settlement approved

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

I think this would be a great opportunity for someone. And you don’t have to be young.

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~daniel_barker~ @daniel-barker.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

People need to grapple with the fact we're in an epistemic crisis that's starting to corrode countless elements of human knowledge.

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

How to begin a career in the arts? First get your grandma to correspond with Rilke. Then get your dad to sell the family tapestries to pay the school fees. (I'd add that one journo described EdW as 'the sweetest, most welcoming person I’ve ever interviewed'. Just not sure how this book will land.)

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Fleur Hitchcock @fleurhitchcock.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Is there any research, about how many authors are still being published five years after debut? I suspect the number is dwindling, but wouldn't know where to look. @thebookseller.com @louiestowell.bsky.social Any ideas?

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Huge new class action lawsuit filed by big publishers and authors against Google this week over AI training. It accuses Google of taking millions of books / articles provided to them for use only in Google Books, Google Play Books, and Google Scholar, and secretly using them to train LLMs. 🧵 1/4

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Tobias Jones @tobiasjones.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Calling all aspiring writers! There are still a couple of places on two creative writing retreats I'm teaching in the coming months. One is in English in Umbria in Oct. (17th-24th): great co-tutors, Italian food, pool, yoga, table tennis, fine wine and hard work! villapia.com/a-haven-for-...

villapia.com

A Haven For Stories Retreat - Villa Pia Lippiano

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

wait till he hears some of them were swedish

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Meta is outrageous. The lack of outrage in relation to SW-W is surely connected to the fact that she worked there for years, she signed an NDA when she left (I know, she says it was under duress) and she has promoted the hell out of the book on the back of the scandal.

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

This is also how I feel about the prospect of reading an entire book written by AI. What’s the fucking point? Why should I pay the value of my attention to someone who has not paid the value of theirs?

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Matt Gabriele @profgabriele.com · 10/07/2026

So… as a medievalist it was a combination

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

I'm sure the pitch I was just sent was AI-generated. Vague yet faintly grandiose. Professional yet slightly chummy. Writers, if you're ever considering pitching to an editor using AI: don't. I can tell you that I was INFURIATED by it. A waste of my time and an insult to my professionalism.

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

wow! I just discovered that the arrow was probably shoved in the eye of (possibly) Harold in the 1842 restoration.

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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

I enjoyed this piece very much. "What was quintessentially English has melted away into something that speaks to another England, a not-yet England, precarious and ill-defined."

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