SOAG: BookBiz News

5-19-25: Quiet Seizure of Creative Policy | Authors Guild Holds the Line | Audible’s Bet on Volume over Voice | And more...

The Quiet Seizure of Creative Policy

Over the span of a weekend, the Trump administration removed the two top officials responsible for overseeing copyright and library systems in the United States: Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress, and Shira Perlmutter, head of the U.S. Copyright Office. Both were experienced, long-serving, and politically independent. Both were replaced by loyalists with negligible qualifications but close ties to the President Trump's legal team.

And I don't think it's coincidence that the timing followed the Copyright Office’s generative AI report, which Perlmutter had overseen. It didn’t propose new legislation but made clear that AI tools scraping copyrighted material pose economic threats to authors and publishers. It affirmed that fair use has limits, and that licensing remains essential. Until now, these positions have been standard copyright doctrine—but in the current environment, even neutrality is viewed as disloyalty.

With Perlmutter out, future guidance on AI and copyright will now emerge from an office led by a political appointee with no public background in IP law. That shift has implications for the book industry far beyond Washington. Copyright policy determines what content remains protected, what training data remains exploitable, and how disputes over generative output are likely to be adjudicated. Those decisions will shape every part of the publishing business, from advances to royalties to discoverability.

Hayden’s removal carries separate but equally far-reaching risks. As Librarian of Congress, she oversaw not just public collections but also the Congressional Research Service and data infrastructure that supports legislative work. Her replacement—Trump’s former criminal defense attorney—now has administrative access to systems that have historically remained insulated from executive influence. Whether the courts eventually block this maneuver will certainly matter less than how much authority the office can wield in the meantime.

The Librarian of Congress is a legislative branch appointment, and the president’s authority to remove that position remains murky. But procedural uncertainty often works in favor of those making the moves. By the time any legal limits are clarified, new priorities will have already been embedded.

The institutions responsible for balancing cultural stewardship with democratic access have always moved slowly. That is part of their strength—and part of their vulnerability. A fast-moving executive can redirect their course long before the publishing industry notices, let alone be able to react, to the consequences. The concern now extends beyond who occupies the chairs to how much damage can be done before anyone is able—or willing—to stop it.

Authors Guild Is Holding the Line

When the NEH grant cancellations were first announced, I wrote about what they represented: a quiet but deliberate attempt to undercut public investment in literature, history, and preservation. Now the Authors Guild has filed a lawsuit—and the case raises deeper concerns than lost money or broken promises. It challenges defending a principle: that public funding for research, writing, translation, and preservation matters. That artistic and cultural works have value even when it isn’t lucrative. That not everything needs to justify itself on a balance sheet.

Over 1,400 grants were revoked in a single move, most of them mid-project. I know the common argument is how tax dollars are wasted on idle dreamers. I don't agree with that, but even presuming it to be true, most grant recipients were translators working on endangered languages, scholars documenting overlooked histories, researchers building archives and writing books that won’t be backed by Netflix or Penguin Random House but still belong in the public record. They made plans. They turned down other opportunities. They relied on signed agreements and federal procedure.

Then came the email: unsigned, unofficial, and unappealable.

According to the Authors Guild's lawsuit, the administration rerouted the canceled NEH grant funds to build a 'National Garden of American Heroes'—a symbolic monument project that prioritizes spectacle and myth-making over preservation and inquiry. This budget shift targets the foundation of what the NEH was built to uphold: public support for cultural and scholarly work that expands our understanding of the nation’s history, its actions, and the voices it has ignored.

Fighting this isn’t optional. If these cancellations stand, they set precedent. If the message lands that research grants can be yanked midstream, that cultural work exists only at the pleasure of the executive branch, that contracts don’t mean what they say—then we’ve handed over far more than a grant program. We’ve conceded that public history is a luxury, not a necessity.

The Authors Guild is right to challenge this. And the rest of us should be watching closely. Because a country that decides it no longer needs public investment in books, archives, and cultural record-keeping has decided that controlling the narrative matters more than documenting the truth, choosing erasure over preservation.

Audible’s Bet on Volume Over Voice

Audible now offers AI narration and machine translation to publishers, including speech-to-speech tools that replicate the voice and style of human narrators across multiple languages. Publishers can choose from over 100 synthetic voices and use a built-in editor to review translations or perform adjustments. AI-powered versions can be upgraded later as the tech improves.

They haven’t said whether these books will be labeled as computer-generated. That omission matters. When human narrators and translators are indistinguishable from synthetic ones, the lines blur fast, and not to the benefit of working professionals.

And yes, I hate listening to it. AI narration grates on my ears, no matter how much polish or inflection the model tries to approximate. I avoid synthetic voices the same way I avoid food with a chemical aftertaste. But I also recognize the counter-argument, and it’s not an empty one: millions of books have never been made available in audio. Thousands of translated works never leave the printed page. Many authors can’t afford to pay for narration or foreign rights distribution. And there are readers around the world who will never find these stories unless someone makes them accessible.

Audible has made a calculated bet: that volume and access will matter more than origin or artistry. That consumers want more books, faster, cheaper, and in more languages—even if some are read by voices that never breathed. It’s not a vision I welcome. But it’s one we can’t afford to ignore.

At the end of the day, we have to come to terms with what we believe books are for. Do we treat them as vessels of voice, memory, and meaning—or as interchangeable units to be processed and scaled? And are those ideas mutually exclusive? Audible has already picked its answer. The rest of us need to decide ours.

Other developments this week:

Spotify submitted an app update that would allow in-app audiobook purchases and hour top-ups, following its partial legal victory over Apple. If Apple approves the changes, it opens real revenue opportunities for authors and publishers—something Apple’s 30% commission structure had long stifled.

Half Price Books is fighting Texas HB 1375, a bill that could make bookstores civilly liable for displaying or selling books deemed harmful to minors. The bill advanced from committee last week, despite warnings that it could decimate in-person retail in favor of vague, less accountable online alternatives.

In the UK, Parliament refused to pass a transparency amendment that would have required tech companies to disclose copyrighted material used in AI training. Budget constraints were the excuse, but the result keeps artists in the dark about whether their work is being scraped and remixed without consent.

Taylor Jenkins Reid was profiled in Time after reportedly signing a five-book deal worth $8 million per title. Her rise—from a modest advance for Evelyn Hugo to TV-backed global bestseller—reveals a path to success increasingly paved by adaptation-ready properties, not just great prose.

Unbound’s collapse continues to unfold. The UK crowdfunding publisher entered bankruptcy owing over £2M to authors, freelancers, and vendors. Its new iteration—Boundless—may have cash, but it also inherits a broken reputation.

The Center for Fiction filed to unionize, joining the growing list of literary nonprofits and independent bookstores asserting a say in how the industry treats its workers.