Seeds of Doubt

Many publishers—and small presses in particular—are rethinking how they use Edelweiss amid steep price hikes, which began earlier this year following the November acquisition of the platform by software company Valsoft. Bloomsbury has partnered with Google Cloud with the aim of leveraging the tech giant’s AI tools to boost book discovery and sales. For the first time ever, Spotify Wrapped includes year-end audiobook streaming data—and the numbers suggest romantasy has yet to loosen its grip on listeners. The Japanese government is planning a unified distribution service platform to consolidate manga publishers’ exports, according to Japan News. Meanwhile, manga publishers themselves are looking to Africa for new talent as demand for the format grows among the continent’s younger generations, Nikkei Asia reports. The New York Times Magazine analyzes the distinctive writing style of AI chatbots. The Guardian profiles Peepal Tree Press, the U.K.-based indie publisher of Caribbean and diasporic writers, 40 years since its founding. And Publishing Perspectives editor-in-chief Porter Anderson has died.