The Power Of BookTok: Why TikTok’s Book Community Is Driving A New Era In Publishing
forbes.com – Monday April 21, 2025
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.
‘Balancing Output with Input’: Margaret Rogerson on Writing Fantasy, Taking Breaks, and Balancing Inspiration and Hard Work
thecrimson.com – Tuesday April 15, 2025
When a reader opens the pages of a fantasy novel, they might relish in anticipation of entering a new, imaginative world and a thrilling and delightful reading experience. But, what does writing fantasy novels look like? What is the journey and the daily routine of an author who creates these fantastical universes, traveling between foreign places from one novel to another?
While such questions might seem abstract and difficult to answer, sitting down and talking to the authors who have experienced them offers exciting insights. This column, “The Daily Desk,” strives to answer these questions: What is an author’s daily routine, and what can we learn from their writing experiences?
“A hug in book form”
A New York Times and internationally bestselling author, Margaret Rogerson began her career with the young adult fantasy standalone “An Enchantment of Ravens” in 2017, continuing with “Sorcery of Thorns” in 2019 and “Vespertine” in 2021.
Taking Humor Writing Seriously
sfwa.org – Tuesday April 15, 2025
A few years ago, I was on a panel on Humorous SF at a convention (an occupational hazard, given what I write). I opened with well-rehearsed remarks about how there seemed to be a resistance to my beloved subgenre among major publishers. Before I could get very far, a person in the audience stood up and said, “Isn’t it true that there aren’t a lot of humorous sci-fi stories because they’re hard to write?”
Hmm…
I can’t argue with that. I view writing humor as drama+: A comic story must do everything a dramatic story does (it has to have characters the reader cares about and an engaging story), plus it has to make the reader laugh. Humorous genre writing can be considered drama++: It has to do everything a dramatic story does, plus make the reader laugh, plus contain genre tropes (aliens or robots for science fiction, magic systems for fantasy, dread for horror, and so on). I write satire, which adds another layer onto this formula—by now, I’m sure you can do the creative math.
Why AI can’t take over creative writing
theconversation.com – Wednesday April 2, 2025
In 1948, the founder of information theory, Claude Shannon, proposed modelling language in terms of the probability of the next word in a sentence given the previous words. These types of probabilistic language models were largely derided, most famously by linguist Noam Chomsky: “The notion of ‘probability of a sentence’ is an entirely useless one.”
In 2022, 74 years after Shannon’s proposal, ChatGPT appeared, which caught the attention of the public, with some even suggesting it was a gateway to super-human intelligence. Going from Shannon’s proposal to ChatGPT took so long because the amount of data and computing time used was unimaginable even a few years before.
ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) learned from a huge corpus of text from the internet. It predicts the probability of the next word given the context: a prompt and the previously generated words.
ChatGPT uses this model to generate language by choosing the next word according to the probabilistic prediction. Think about drawing words from a hat, where the words predicted to have a higher probability have more copies in the hat. ChatGPT produces text that seems intelligent.
There is a lot of controversy about how these tools can help or hinder learning and practising creative writing. As a professor of computer science who has authored hundreds of works on artificial intelligence (AI), including AI textbooks that cover the social impact of large language models, I think understanding how the models work can help writers and educators consider the limitations and potential uses of AI for what might be called “creative” writing.
How to Format and Submit Your Children's Book Manuscript
litreactor.com – Wednesday April 2, 2025
So, you’ve finished writing your children’s book. Congratulations! You’ve taken a significant step on the road to publication. However, the journey doesn’t end here — you’ll need to polish up your manuscript before you start pitching your story to agents and publishers.
In this post, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about getting your manuscript ready for submission, from industry-standard formatting to personalizing your query letter. Let’s get started!
eMerge literary magazine: Charles L. Templeton’s vision for amplifying emerging voices
londondaily.news – Thursday March 27, 2025
Charles L. Templeton’s journey as a literary advocate took a groundbreaking turn with the creation of eMerge, a platform that has quickly become a beacon for emerging voices in the literary world. Frustrated by the limitations and gatekeeping prevalent in mainstream publishing, Templeton founded eMerge with a simple yet powerful mission: to provide a space where underrepresented and emerging writers could have their work heard.
With a keen understanding of the challenges faced by new authors, eMerge was designed not only as a publication but as a community—one where writers, poets, and storytellers from all walks of life could come together to share their voices without fear of exclusion. Under Templeton’s visionary leadership, eMerge has become a literary magazine that embraces diversity, encourages creativity, and celebrates the power of storytelling.
What sets eMerge apart from other literary magazines is its unwavering commitment to inclusivity and its relentless pursuit of high-quality, authentic work. Templeton’s editorial direction has allowed the magazine to flourish, earning national recognition and a place in the Library of Congress Collection. This achievement is a testament to Templeton’s ability to curate meaningful content while maintaining a dedication to publishing diverse voices. eMerge doesn’t just showcase new talent; it gives emerging writers the platform they need to build lasting careers. Whether it’s through poetry, short stories, or essays, eMerge has become a trusted space for both emerging and established writers, creating an environment where creativity is nurtured and celebrated, and where every voice, no matter how unconventional, is given the opportunity to shine.
The Vanishing White Male Writer
compactmag.com – Friday March 21, 2025
t’s easy enough to trace the decline of young white men in American letters—just browse The New York Times’s “Notable Fiction” list. In 2012 the Times included seven white American men under the age of 43 (the cut-off for a millennial today); in 2013 there were six, in 2014 there were six.
And then the doors shut.
By 2021, there was not one white male millennial on the “Notable Fiction” list. There were none again in 2022, and just one apiece in 2023 and 2024 (since 2021, just 2 of 72 millennials featured were white American men). There were no white male millennials featured in Vulture’s 2024 year-end fiction list, none in Vanity Fair’s, none in The Atlantic’s. Esquire, a magazine ostensibly geared towards male millennials, has featured 53 millennial fiction writers on its year-end book lists since 2020. Only one was a white American man.
Over the course of the 2010s, the literary pipeline for white men was effectively shut down. Between 2001 and 2011, six white men won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions prize for debut fiction. Since 2020, not a single white man has even been nominated (of 25 total nominations). The past decade has seen 70 finalists for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize—with again, not a single straight white American millennial man. Of 14 millennial finalists for the National Book Award during that same time period, exactly zero are white men. The Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, a launching pad for young writers, currently has zero white male fiction and poetry fellows (of 25 fiction fellows since 2020, just one was a white man). Perhaps most astonishingly, not a single white American man born after 1984 has published a work of literary fiction in The New Yorker (at least 24, and probably closer to 30, younger millennials have been published in total).
In defence of self-publishing
spectator.co.uk – Wednesday March 19, 2025
Years ago, newly triumphant from getting my first book published, I went to my parents’ house for a celebration dinner. Having duly toasted their son’s modest literary success, they then revealed that I wasn’t the new author in their social circle. An old university friend of theirs from Holland – we’ll call him Jörg – had just sent them a copy of his new book, ‘a sort of travel memoir, a bit like yours’.
This was not a comparison I welcomed. My book was about quitting my job as pot-holes correspondent on the London Evening Standard to freelance in post-Saddam Iraq – not exactly Michael Herr’s Dispatches, granted, but more gripping, I liked to think, than writing about roadworks on Streatham High Road. Jörg’s book was a self-published account of his campervanning trip the year before across America. At a hefty 500 pages long, it was twice the length of mine. And much as one can commend Dutch pensioners for their adventurous travelling spirit, Jörg was not a Theroux or Chatwin. Chapter one was devoted largely to a quiet first night in a motorway service station, and how it compared to those back home.
I thought of Jörg’s book last week, when the writer Bill Bryson railed against self-published books, which have proliferated in the era of e-publishing and Kindle. Bryson told the Times that many were ‘of no interest’, and that a glut of books about ‘some anonymous person’s life’ made it harder for genuinely talented authors to be spotted by publishers. His remarks reflect a widespread disdain for DIY authors. As the phrase ‘vanity publishing’ suggests, it’s seen as literary onanism, a dirty habit best resisted rather than indulged.
7 Writing Retreats Around the World For Emerging and Established Writers
electricliterature.com – Sunday March 9, 2025
Writing retreats offer the opportunity for writers to fully immerse themselves in their craft, free from the distractions of daily life. These getaways combine inspiring locations, structured time, and a like-minded community to reignite creativity and boost productivity. Whether you’re seeking solitude to finish a manuscript or a collaborative environment to workshop ideas, a retreat can serve as the perfect catalyst.
I run a writer’s retreat called Studio Luce, steps away from the black sand beach of El Paredón, on the Pacific coast of Guatemala. The retreat is hosted in a 3-bed villa, featuring a newly built writing studio, alongside a tropical garden and pool. We offer week-long author-led retreats throughout the year, bringing together small groups of writers to focus on their craft.
While some retreats are well-known—particularly in the U.S.—there are many hidden gems scattered around the world that offer equally transformative experiences. Here are 7 unique international writing retreats for when you need to get away and focus on your writing:
The Trials and Tribulations of Writing Submissions: A Chat with Professor Emma Törzs and Professor Ben Voigt
macalester.edu – Saturday March 8, 2025
It is March 7th, and if you’ve been regularly scanning the English department emails, you’ll know that today is your final day to submit to the department’s three esteemed writing contests. Today, writers, the arduous two-month waiting period commences. Rather than fret over your submissions, The Words is here to offer solace in the wisdom of Professor Emma Törzs ’09 and Professor Ben Voigt ’10, two of the department’s very own contest winners and talented authors.
Professor Emma Törzs won the Harry Scherman Writing Contest in the category of Creative Prose, and Professor Ben Voigt was selected as the Macalester Finalist for the Academy of American Poets Prize.
Do you recall any part of the writing process for your submission?
B: I was working with a mentor, but I switched from fiction to poetry at the end of undergrad. I wrote this piece for an independent study, and it was inspired by and went along with an art installation. The piece was very narrative, but it had a turn near the end, a volta, and I remember thinking, “So, this is what a poem feels like.”
E: Well, my first experience of writing short stories was in college, believe it or not, in Peter Bognanni’s class. Because I started writing short fiction in creative writing classes, my experience of writing fiction was always sort of tied with the idea of deadlines and readership, which I think has actually helped me a lot. Having readers in mind, having an audience in mind, and working with deadlines is something that you continue to do long out of college if you want to keep writing.
Get the free newsletter | Submit a news item or article | Get Writers' News for your website
