BookCon is Back. 8th Note Press is Shutting Down. Rolling Stone Deleted an Article about Literary Substack.

A quick hot take on news items.

Happy Juneteenth. Here is a Juneteenth reading list from the National Museum of African American History & Culture. Now, more than ever, the publishing industry must support diverse voices.

I must have jinxed things when I mentioned in my last newsletter that publishing news was slow. Mentioned in this newsletter: TikTok, BookTok, BookCon, Rolling Stone, Substack, 8th Note Press.

BOOKCON IS BACK, BABY!

You know we book publishing folks feel deprived of human interaction when we get excited about a book convention returning to the Javits Center. That’s right, ReedPop is bringing BookCon back. Those other conferences don’t know how to act. Yeah. (Read that to the beat of Sexy Back by Justin Timberlake). USA Today has the exclusive here. The dates are April 18-19, 2026, and the venue is the good ol’ Javits Center. I never thought I’d say this after attending BookExpo for so many years, but I’m excited about a big book conference where consumers can attend. It’s good for the industry. Maybe I’ll think up something fun for a Publishing Confidential party.

8th Note Press Looks Like It’s Closing

I’ve been following Jane Friedman’s reporting on 8th Note Press, and things haven’t been looking good for the fledgling publishing division of TikTok. This morning, The Bookseller reports:

A publishing business developed by the parent company of TikTok to cash in on the success of #BookTok appears to be closing – although neither the publisher or TikTok, nor the platform’s parent company and partners, will go on record, despite being approached by The Bookseller on multiple occasions. 8th Note Press, owned by the Chinese technology giant ByteDance, was launched as a publisher of e-books intended to appeal to a “Millennial/Gen Z” audience in April 2023.

The Bookseller understands that authors and agents are currently negotiating the return of rights to titles acquired by the publisher, and the business’s digital presence has apparently been quietly deleted.

I’m VERY interested in a post-mortem on this. What went wrong? They poached people from legacy publishers, some of whom are now out of a job. Like Jane Friedman, I thought that the acquisition of 8th Note by Zando was a lifeline, and I recall people being upset when 8th Note launched because they felt it’d give Zando an unfair advantage. Well, if there’s one thing I can say for sure, it's that sales are not guaranteed simply because someone has a TikTok presence or influencers on TikTok are talking about a book. Word of mouth still rules, so it's really a question of where the discussion about a book begins and where it goes.

The Curious Case of the Deleted Rolling Stone article

A couple of days ago,

Andrea Bartz

tagged me in a note with a link to a Rolling Stone article about “literary Substack.” The article was quite terrible, written as if ChatGPT had spit out results to the prompt “Write an article about why Substack is good for authors.” The piece hadn’t even made the rounds on social media when it suddenly disappeared. I checked the Wayback Machine, and it wasn’t there, either. Something tells me it was, in fact, AI slop, and to that I say, don’t even try writing a piece about books or book publishing with AI, because we will know, and it will get called out.

My caveat here is that I use AI regularly, and it saves me a lot of time. However, I do not use it to write original material (like this newsletter!). Do I use it to make my emails sound more pleasant at times? Yes, and it is excellent for that. It’s also good for a choice of subject lines when you are pitching media, and much more. Using AI to write an entire article and getting paid for it is cheating—hard stop. It’s also bad for your career. Just ask the guy who wrote the fake summer reading roundup.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

I am giving a presentation at the Women’s Fiction Virtual Summit on Sunday, June 22, at 1pm. Details below, and registration here.

🎟 Members: $100 both days | $60 single day
🎟 Non-members: $125 both days | $75 single day

Some cool projects I’m working on:

FADE IN by Kyle Mills, 6/29. You can read more about the book here. Interested in a copy or an interview?

Please email me: publishingconfidential@gmail.com

SLIP by Mallary Tenore Tarpley, 8/5. You can read more about the book here. Mallary is a great interview. If you’d like a copy of the book, email me at publishingconfidential@gmail.com

Calypso Blue by Brian Silverman, 6/30. You can read more about the book here. If you’d like a copy of the book, email me at publishingconfidential@gmail.com

More to come on some of my fall projects!