Gen Zers and millennials are putting creative twists on book clubs, driven by a renewed love of reading and a growing desire for off-screen connection.
Links of the week April 28 2025 (18)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
28 April 2025
But unlike more traditional book clubs, many of these groups add on another activity - or multiple - to turn their gatherings into social events rather than introverted hangs.
Some of the groups like to run after reading. Others enjoy making charm bracelets. One group hosts an annual "Booksgiving," where members bring their own titles to wrap for a blind book exchange.
Across the U.S., book clubs have transformed into social scenes, with many readers saying these groups have been a lifeline to building friendships and seeking community in a post-pandemic world.
"It's definitely evolved from the traditional, ‘Oh, let's meet at a coffee shop, talk about the book, go over these discussion questions,'" said Ijanae Dawkins, 26, founder of Philly's chapter of a club called Book and Sip. "I have people every month come up to me at the book parties, and they're like, ‘Oh my gosh, I was so shy coming into it. This is my first book party. I made three new friends and we're going out next weekend.'"
The Association of American PublishersThe national trade association of the American book publishing industry; AAP has more than 300 members, including most of the major commercial publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly societies filed an amicus brief on April 11 supporting authors in their class action lawsuit against Meta for copyright infringement related to AI training.
The brief argues that Meta's use of copyrighted works to train its LLaMA AI model fails to meet fair use standards and contradicts the company's claims that licensing options for such content don't exist.
"Meta's systematic copying and encoding of protected creative works, word by word, into a large language model, is not a transformative fair use under the law, but rather, grossly exceeds the doctrine's legal purpose and judicial precedent," Maria A. Pallante, president and CEO of AAP, said.
The book-posting operations have had a huge market impact, but will publishing their own titles cost them their serendipitous magic?
Book subscription services are magic. A few clicks of a form and a bunch of new books , selected by talented curators, turn up at your door - often with collectible perks such as special cover designs and art. In a world saturated by choice and trends, not only is the choosing done for you, but you'll often have a less conventional, better rounded and precious bookshelf collection to show for it.
This is presumably why there's a strong appetite for such services: UK fantasy subscription box FairyLoot has 569,000 followers on Instagram alone, and many bookshops have started sending out their own boxes.
Now, some of these businesses have decided not just to sell books, but to publish their own: In January, FairyLoot announced a collaboration with Transworld, a division of Penguin Random House, while last week Canada-based subscription service OwlCrate launched OwlCrate Press.
A new study from the U.K. adds to the growing body of work documenting the challenges adults increasingly face when it comes to reading
Findings from the latest "State of the Nation in Adult Reading" report from the Reading Agency, a London-based literacy nonprofit, describe "a growing reading crisis, especially among younger adults," owing to distraction-filled environments and diminishing capacities for focus.
According to the report, nearly half (46%) of U.K. adults say they struggle to focus on reading due to distractions around them. That figure rises to 55% among respondents ages 16-24 and 35-44, and to 52% for respondents ages 25-34. One in three adults (33%) revealed that they multitask while reading, doing other things such as commuting, exercising, or household chores. For younger adults, this figure also rises: 48% of 25-34 year-olds and 43% of 16-24 year-olds and 35-44 year-olds reported reading while multitasking.
Skewed interpretations of classic works are feeding the dark visions of tech moguls, from Musk to Thiel
One can only imagine the horror the late Iain Banks would have felt on learning his legendary Culture series is a favourite of Elon Musk. The Scottish author was an outspoken socialist who could never understand why rightwing fans liked novels that were so obviously an attack on their worldview.
But that hasn't stopped Musk, whose Neuralink company - which develops implantable brain-to-computer interfaces - was directly inspired by Banks's concept of "neural lace". The barges used by SpaceX to land their booster rockets are all named after spaceships from the Culture books.
Musk's entire career stems from trying to replicate sci-fi novels. His desire to colonise Mars was sparked by the Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov (another staunch leftwinger). Tesla's Cybertruck is something that - in Musk's words - "Bladerunner [sic] would have driven".
"It seems a curious choice, I suppose, to take a world of such huge stakes and instead focus on the small things"
When I first trial-ballooned the idea of writing a fantasy murder mystery to a few other writer friends, the concept was met with a little skepticism: Could be really tough! Murder mysteries need people to know exactly how the world works. With fantasy, you can do anything, so it's hard to build a mystery out of that.
I knew instantly that this wasn't so. Fantasy magic works only when the audience knows exactly what it can and can't do: that's a core thesis of worldbuilding. But more to the point, I knew that a fantasy murder mystery had been done before - and had been so successfully that it had become a cornerstone of entertainment culture.
The first four Harry Potter books always focus on a series of mysterious crimes taking place within a tightly contained environment, with some of the crimes producing bodies (though not dead ones, just magically paralyzed ones). The mysteries always follow very tight, specific beats: there are clues built up during the start of school, and then more are carefully released at very predictable events after, like sports games, holiday parties, Christmas breaks, and exams. There are suspects, revelations, theories, and often a smaller set of crimes that the detectives confuse for the larger threat. All of it builds to a grand confrontation where the secret villain is revealed to have been present the whole time.
What began as a cozy nook on the corner of the internet, has quickly transformed into a global phenomenon. As of 2025, #BookTok has accumulated 370 billion views, with over 52 million creations jumping on board-skyrocketing bestsellers, reviving backlist titles and informing reading habits worldwide1.
At its core, BookTok thrives on community-driven content: emotional reviews, hot takes, character impersonations and viral recommendations land these reads on the feeds of not just the literary set, but diverse audiences around the world.
To help publishers tap into this momentum, we've compiled strategies, insights, and case studies on the Publisher Insights Hub to make the most of the BookTok boom.
Building Communities Around Authors and Books
The line between author and reader has changed. What once required a book tour or a late-night interview now happens on a phone screen. TikTok has given rise to a new kind of literary connection-immediate, unfiltered, and deeply personal. Authors don't just market their books; they build communities. And readers, in turn, don't just consume stories-they comment on them, review them, and share them with their fellow readers.
The Publishers' Licensing Services (PLS) and the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) have announced "a significant development" in the licensing of content for generative AI.
The two collective management organisations representing publishers and authors have agreed to the development by the Copyright Licensing Agency
CLA is the UK's Reproduction Rights Organisation. It is responsible for looking after the interests of rights owners over the copying of books, journals and periodicals. A non-profit making company, it is owned by its members, the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society and the Publishers Licensing Society. www.cla.co.uk
(CLA) of a new collective licence for generative AI.The organisations dubbed the model "significant". They said: "The pioneering licence for the use of text in generative AI, such as in the training and fine-tuning of an AI language model or use in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), will be the first of its kind to be developed in the UK. The licence will provide the opportunity for rightsholders who are not in a position to negotiate direct licensing agreements with AI developers, to receive renumeration for the use of their works in generative AI models and applications while ensuring that their content is protected, and copyright is respected.
"The new collective licence will offer a cost-effective and convenient solution to AI developers who are required to obtain permission to use content to innovate and develop models."
A pioneering alternative to the opt-out system proposed by the government is supported by publishers and writers and is set to be available for use this summer
UK licensing bodies have announced a "pioneering" collective licence that will allow authors to be paid for the use of their works to train generative AI models.
The Copyright Licensing Agency
CLA is the UK's Reproduction Rights Organisation. It is responsible for looking after the interests of rights owners over the copying of books, journals and periodicals. A non-profit making company, it is owned by its members, the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society and the Publishers Licensing Society. www.cla.co.uk
(CLA) - which is directed by the Publishers' Licensing Services (PLS) and the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), representing publishers and authors - will develop the licence, set to be the first of its kind in the UK.Expected to be made available to AI developers this summer, it will allow copyright holders "who are not in a position to negotiate direct licensing agreements with AI developers" to be paid for the use of their works.
Last month, I prompted Meta AI with a question: "Is it okay to use pirated books to train AI?" The machine's response was unequivocal. "Using pirated books to train AI is not okay," it admonished. "In fact, it's a serious violation of copyright laws and can have significant consequences for authors and publishers. Recently, it's been reported that Meta used millions of pirated books to develop its AI programs, which has sparked widespread outrage and condemnation from the writing community."
A few days after my original query, for reasons best known to itself, the algorithm lawyered up. In response to the same prompt, it hedged, "Using pirated books to train AI is a complex issue, and the answer isn't straightforward. While some companies, like Meta, argue that their use of copyrighted material falls under fair use, others claim it infringes on copyright laws." (In a 2024 statement, Meta describes such varying responses as "hallucinations," a challenge for all generative AI systems.)
The author of Beyond the Secret Lake, which won the Selfies Award, tells BookBrunch about her inspirations, research, and why she chose to self-publish
What inspired The Secret Lake series?
The main inspiration for the story came when friends moved to a ground floor apartment in one of the grand converted Victorian houses that backs onto the communal gardens near Notting Hill. The moment I stepped out and saw all the children playing there, I had what I now call one of my 'tingly moments' as I began to wonder what might happen if they could meet the children who had lived and played there over 100 years earlier.
The author of The Echoing Shore tells BookBrunch about writing as a labour of love, the importance of setting, and his next project
What inspired The Echoing Shore?
'I've swum and surfed in Cornwall most of my life, but the biggest inspiration has been the epic tales of lifeboat rescues and tragedies. These stories have fascinated me since I became a shore-based volunteer for the lifeboat service. Hundreds of lifeboat crew have lost their lives going to the aid of stricken vessels. Cornwall has been hit hard with fatalities at stations in Newquay, Padstow, St Ives and Mousehole. I wanted my story to bring out not only the raw majesty and beauty of Cornwall but also the deprivations that persist in rural areas and small coastal towns.
Short novels are dominating awards. Should writers care?
When I was young, I dreamed of being a novelist. Not a writer, not an author, but a novelist. I'm not even sure why the distinction was that important to me, or what I thought the difference was; I just liked the word.
I can't remember when I became aware of the concept of a novella, that size of book that sits between short story and novel, but it would have been around my teenage years I would guess. I'm pretty sure, however, that I was in my forties before I realised that, between the novella and the short story, there was such a thing as a novelette.
There's no consensus on where the boundaries between novel, novella and novelettes sit. The most practical (if not the only practical) application of the idea of a word-count limit is with awards. Most awarding bodies will have some criteria by which your book must be judged to be eligible, and I do get this. If you've spent years writing a 150,000-word behemoth, you might feel piqued to be beaten to that literary prize by a 20-page pamphlet. But outside of judging criteria, why do some writers seem to obsess about this?
Author Linda Newbery on self-publishing her new novel, The One True Thing
For several years I sorted books in a charity shop, and now help run a bookstall at a yearly Green Fair. In both situations there%u2019s one kind of book that rarely sells: hefty hardback novels, often crime, that have presumably been given as a present, read once (if at all) then donated. In second-hand contexts, very few people want books like these; paperbacks are far more popular. Most of those donated will end up in landfill. What a waste! - of the paper used to make the book, the warehouse storage, the fuel for transportation. And, Green Fair volunteers might add, of the effort of lugging heavy boxes to the stall and re-packing unwanted copies at the end of the day.
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