HarperCollins Sells Rights to Books for AI Training; Amazon KDP to Stop Serial Releases; 4 Submissions Opportunities

This is a new monthly feature, that we are trying out. We will only continue it if it develops a following.

This monthly column will be published on the fourth Thursday of every month. It will be divided into three sections of varying length. The first section will be focused on opportunities for writers, ranging from editorial work to journals seeking submissions.

Often at Authors Publish there are opportunities that we want to include that don’t fit neatly into an already existing list, like non-paying anthology markets open to general submissions, or journals that we’ve already reviewed that want to share that they are open to submissions again. Or they are opportunities that do fit neatly on existing lists, but we found out about them, only after we sent out the updated version of that list.

The second section will focus on various news stories and blog posts that are relevant to the creative writing community, including our perspective on it. We will still do occasional stand-alone posts focused on publishing industry issues, etc.

The third section will focus on sharing subscribers’ success stories, and linking to their recently published work. We are grateful for any feedback. Please send us an email at support@authorspublish.com if you have any thoughts.

Opportunities:

Dulcet Literary Magazine, which we reviewed before here, is open to submissions from the 1st through the 30th of November. The theme of their second issue is Dusk & Dawn. Learn more here.

The Mixtape Review is now open to submissions of prose and poetry for their second issue. They ask that submit your writing along with the title of the song, and artist.

rhizomag, is a forthcoming literary magazine dedicated to exploring themes of grief, isolation, and transformation that is founded by Puerto Rican writers Karlié Rodríguez and Melissa Alvarado Sierra.  rhizomag aims to highlight voices historically underrepresented in literature, publishing compelling narratives in English, Spanish, and Spanglish. Their first submission deadline is November 30th.

Wordrunner eChapbooks micro-prose feature opens to submissions on December 1st and they will remain open to December 31st. You can read their full guidelines here. They only pay one author 25 dollars for being the editors choice. You can read the previous collection here.

Sundress Publications is an entirely volunteer-run 501(c)(3) nonprofit publishing collective that hosts a number of online journals, and The Best of the Net competition, alongside publishing chapbooks, full-length collections, and literary anthologies in both print and digital formats. They are currently seeking editorial interns, and readers for contests, open reading periods, and solicited submissions. These readers may also review residency and reading series applications or serve as readers for Best of the Net. To learn more, go here, but please note, that none of these positions are paying. I will say, as a personal aside, that being a reader for a small press and a literary journal really helped me as an author.

News:

Penguin Random House has added a note to the copyright pages on new books and reissues, saying that they cannot be used ‘for the purpose of training artificial intelligence.’ They are the first major publishing house to add such a note to their books that I know of. You can learn more here.

HarperCollins has made a deal with a big AI company (part of the deal is they cannot disclose the name of the company – but allegedly it is Microsoft), and the first article I read about it on Publishers Marketplace made it seem like it was only for nonfiction books (You have to be a member and log in to read the full story here). However this article, which you don’t have to log in to read, makes it much clearer that the deal extends to fiction, including children’s books. Also, just in case you don’t know, AI has major environmental issues on top of all the other issues (You can read more about the environmental issues here).

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) has announced that they will close down their serial publishing operation, Kindle Vella in February 2025. You can learn more here.

Querying authors have started to create and share “Agent and Editors guides” to their unpublished manuscripts, on social media. These guides are four images or slides that cover the title, comps, and plot, of the information, not just with words but with images. It is a growing trend and has been covered a few places including here (you must log in to read the full story), and here.

Subscribers’ Successes:

Peggy Landsman published her first full length collection of poems with Nightingale & Sparrow press, entitled Too Much World, Not Enough Chocolate.

Rochelle Jewel Shapiro’s poem, An Angel Appeared to Rilke in the Garden, was recently published by Amethyst Review.

Amethyst Review also recently published Joan Lerman’s poem, A Special Scarf.

Danielle Wong‘s picture book Misadventures of your Neighbourhood Dragon, was released in early October.

Please send us an email at support@authorspublish.com if you have a publication success you want to share in our December update.