Recent content by AgentPete

The below email just arrived in my inbox and is a total AI scam. Lots of them - millions? - will be flying around right now, each one individually-personalized through the miracle of AI to each and every recipient. Pretending to be from Britain’s famous Hay festival, it’s taking audacious...

DAILY SUMMARY: Publishing Industry News Southeast Asia's Library Revolution: Lessons for Western Publishers Libraries across Southeast Asia are reshaping national development strategy, with dramatic infrastructure transformations underway in Cambodia and Thailand that publishers worldwide...

This may appear to be a rather “dull” few days with the Author Platform system… apparently no new features (altho I may trail one in today’s Huddle!). What’s happening is a ton of work behind the scenes, e.g. resolving conflicts, building code resilience and improving performance. Please...

A small (but important) service update. When we moved the Colony onto a new server ten days ago, I forgot to tell the new server that it would be sending emails. Because of this, none have been sent for the last ten days 😞 So if you were expecting email notifications about events in the Colony...

DAILY SUMMARY: Publishing Industry News PRH Profits Fell 4.7% in 2025 Penguin Random House's operating profit fell 4.7% to €704 million in 2025, though total revenue rose 1.3% to €5 billion. Parent company Bertelsmann attributed the profit decline to growth-related expenses in the US core...

DAILY SUMMARY: Publishing Industry News HarperCollins Reorganizes U.S. Trade Operations In her first major move since being named CEO of HarperCollins U.S. trade, Liate Stehlik has restructured the sales team into separate divisional sales and channel sales groups, aimed at distinguishing...

I’m thrilled to let you know that the Litopia Author Platform™ is nearly ready for its public beta period. As you’ll know if you’ve been following our progress in Huddles or as one of our early beta-testers, a gargantuan amount of work has gone into creating what will be the world’s first...

DAILY SUMMARY: Publishing Industry News Chicken Soup for the Soul Sues AI Firms for Copyright Infringement The company has filed suit against OpenAI and seven other tech firms, making the novel claim that the entire generative AI industry was built on a foundation of pirated books first...

DAILY SUMMARY: Publishing Industry News Horror Novel 'Shy Girl' Canceled Over Suspected A.I. Use Hachette has announced it will not release the horror novel Shy Girl in the United States and will discontinue its UK edition after suspected artificial intelligence involvement in its creation...

DAILY SUMMARY: Publishing Industry News Baker & Taylor Makes Surprise Chapter 11 Filing The closed library wholesaler has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, reporting debts of between $100 million and $500 million against assets of just $1 million to $10 million. Penguin Random House...

Very pleased to say that after some useful feedback from @Robinne Weiss, we’ve now added the ability for you to sort your bibliography entries into whatever order of appearance you want. The “featured’ book will now automatically be the book that you’ve put into the first position. More info...

DAILY SUMMARY: Publishing Industry News Book Output Topped Four Million in 2025 The total number of books published in the U.S. in 2025 surged 32.5% over 2024, according to Bowker data, driven largely by a boom in self-published titles. The number of traditionally published books rose 6.6% to...

The Colony has just moved to a new server. Everything seems to have gone well, but if you notice any strangeness (apart from the normal strangeness, natch) please let me know :) p.

Yes, it’s on the to-do list. Everyone – please will you use the Bug Report / Feature Request forms for… bug reports and feature requests :) You have no idea how time-consuming these things can be if you don’t give us all the information we need. The forms are there to make it easier for us...