Dark Horse Drops Gaiman, Ebooks Come to Bookshop, ONYX STORM is the Fastest-Selling Books in 20 years, and more.

Summary

Book Riot - The Podcast Summary

Episode Title: Dark Horse Drops Gaiman, Ebooks Come to Bookshop, ONYX STORM is the Fastest-Selling Book in 20 Years, and More
Release Date: February 3, 2025
Hosts: Jeff O'Neill and Rebecca Schinsky

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1. Dark Horse Discontinues Neil Gaiman’s Works

In this episode, Jeff O'Neill and Rebecca Schinsky delve into the significant news that Dark Horse Comics has ceased publishing new works by Neil Gaiman. Jeff opens the discussion by stating, “Dark Horse decided to drop the upcoming works from Neil Gaiman” (00:59), highlighting the complexity behind the decision due to Gaiman's extensive back catalog.

Rebecca adds, “I wish that all of the companies and entities involved had acknowledged it right up front,” (13:20) emphasizing the importance of transparency in such matters. The hosts discuss the broader implications for publishers and the literary community, reflecting on the balance between supporting authors and addressing serious allegations.

2. Launch of Ebooks on Bookshop.org

A major focus of the episode is Bookshop.org’s recent launch of their ebook platform. Jeff remarks, “You can now buy ebooks through Bookshop and read them in the Bookshop app” (21:24), explaining that the app is available on both Android and iOS devices. However, he notes the limitation that ebooks cannot be directly purchased through the app due to Apple's 30% cut, similar to Amazon’s Kindle restrictions.

Rebecca adds, “It looks good and is easy to use,” (22:52) acknowledging the user-friendly interface while also discussing technical challenges such as DRM restrictions that prevent ebooks from being read on Kindle devices. The hosts explore the potential impact of this launch on independent bookstores and the ebook market, considering whether it might shift consumer behavior away from Amazon.

3. ONYX STORM Sets Sales Records

Jeff and Rebecca celebrate the unprecedented success of ONYX STORM, which Jeff describes as “the fastest-selling book in 20 years” (48:05). According to data from Pango Books, the deluxe editions initially sold for around $250 but have recently decreased to $80, suggesting a rapid turnover in the secondary market.

Rebecca observes, “I was in a Barnes and Noble last week and then a local bookstore... both of them only had the deluxe edition displayed” (48:55), indicating retailers’ preference for higher-margin formats. They discuss the sustainability of such high sales and ponder whether this marks the peak of its popularity or if it will continue to hold its record-breaking status.

4. The Role of AI in Publishing and Beyond

The hosts engage in a thought-provoking conversation about the influence of AI in various sectors, including publishing. Jeff shares his mixed experiences with AI tools, stating, “The book recommendations were spot on... but the academic titles were complete fabrications” (40:01). This underscores the current limitations and reliability issues with AI-generated content.

Rebecca discusses the Authors Guild’s initiative to introduce a “Human Authored” certification to differentiate human-written work from AI-generated content (43:28). She critiques this move, suggesting it may serve more to appease authors than to inform consumers effectively. Jeff echoes the sentiment, describing the effort as “building a sandcastle with the tide coming in” (44:19), indicating skepticism about its long-term efficacy.

5. Community Support: Heroes of the Week

Highlighting positive community actions, Rebecca spotlights Octavia's Bookshelf in Pasadena, California, which transformed into a resource center during recent wildfires. “They packed up all the books... and people who needed those things were able to show up at Octavia's Bookshelf and get those items and get some shelter” (59:42). This act of mutual aid demonstrates the powerful role of bookstores beyond their traditional functions, serving as vital community hubs in times of crisis.

6. Upcoming Releases and Recommendations

Jeff and Rebecca share their latest book reads and anticipate upcoming releases:

• We Do Not Part by Hong Kong: Scheduled for discussion in an upcoming episode.
• Heroes of the Week: Featuring Octavia's Bookshelf.
• Defy by Sunita Shah: Jeff praises its exploration of consent and defiance, although he felt it lacked an energizing impact (62:54).
• Y2K by Colette Shade: Rebecca critiques its uneven blending of personal memoir and social history, yet finds the inclusion of cultural anecdotes, like the origin of Google Image Search, intriguing (63:15).
• The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown: An exciting new release expected on September 9th, prompting anticipation for its global adventure and Robert Langdon's return (55:28).

7. Listener Engagement and Personal Stories

The podcast features listener interactions, with Jeff recounting personal experiences using AI tools, highlighting both their potential and pitfalls. “It feels like a chimera of utility and complete... it felt like articulations of things that made sense to me” (41:38) Jeff shares his mixed feelings about AI's role in research and daily tasks.

Rebecca also touches on the human aspects of reading and personal growth through books, emphasizing the diverse reasons people engage with different genres and formats.

8. Sponsors and Excerpts

The episode includes sponsorship messages from Intuit TurboTax, Allison Holker’s memoir My Story of Love, Loss and Embracing the Light, Peachtree Teen’s Among Serpents by Mark J. Gregson, Flatiron Books’ Ambition by Natalie Keller Reinert, Underlined’s The Party by Natasha Preston, and Ladarian Williams’ Blood at the Root. An excerpt from Allison Holker’s memoir is shared, providing a poignant reflection on love, loss, and resilience.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Jeff O'Neill (00:59): “Dark Horse decided to drop the upcoming works from Neil Gaiman.”
• Rebecca Schinsky (13:20): “I wish that all of the companies and entities involved had acknowledged it right up front.”
• Jeff O'Neill (21:24): “You can now buy ebooks through Bookshop and read them in the Bookshop app.”
• Rebecca Schinsky (22:52): “It looks good and is easy to use.”
• Jeff O'Neill (48:05): “ONYX STORM is the fastest-selling book in 20 years.”
• Rebecca Schinsky (59:42): “This is really beautiful community mutual aid action and a really like gorgeous example of bookstores thinking outside of what can a bookstore do.”
• Jeff O'Neill (40:01): “The book recommendations were spot on… but the academic titles were complete fabrications.”
• Rebecca Schinsky (43:28): “It's about author feelings more than consumer protection.”
• Jeff O'Neill (44:19): “It's like building a sandcastle with the tide coming in.”
• Rebecca Schinsky (63:15): “I would have liked one or the other, but to me they didn't mesh.”

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Conclusion

Jeff and Rebecca navigate a dynamic landscape of the publishing world, addressing significant industry shifts, technological advancements, and community resilience. Their insightful discussions on topics like the discontinuation of Neil Gaiman’s works by Dark Horse, the launch of Bookshop's ebook platform, the soaring sales of ONYX STORM, and the complex role of AI in publishing provide listeners with a comprehensive overview of current trends and challenges. Additionally, their spotlight on community heroes exemplifies the enduring spirit of collaboration and support within the literary world.

For those who missed the episode, this summary encapsulates the essence of the conversation, offering valuable insights into the evolving domains of books and reading.

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For more detailed discussions and episode-specific content, visit bookriot.com/podcast.

Transcript

[Rebecca Schinsky]

What's the best time of day to get a deal? All day with Jack in the box's.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All day big deal meal.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You get to choose from four entrees like the supreme croissant and five tasty sides plus a drink starting at $5. So hurry in or take your time. You've got all day at Jack. Every bite's a big deal. This episode is brought to you by Intuit. TurboTax didn't file with TurboTax last year. That's in the past. Now taxes is getting the TurboTax app and filing your own taxes for free. If you didn't file with them last year, file by February 18th. All tax forms all 100% free. Now this is taxes intuit TurboTax. New filers and filers who didn't use TurboTax last year only must start and file your own taxes in app by February 18th. Excludes TurboTax Live full [e-mail] this is.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The Book Riot podcast. I'm Jeff O'Neill.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm Rebecca Schinsky and today we got.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A full new show over the weekend. Dark Horse decided to drop the upcoming works from Neil Gaiman. That's a little more complicated than that because there's back catalog and everything else but you know, that's how going on. There's all kinds of AI stuff going on. There's bookshop launch and stuff. It's a busy news week, Rebecca. It just is.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, it feels like we are back fully in the swing now of a new year in the world of books and reading.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, a chock a block book ticker means I don't have to pay attention to political news which is great. So if you can keep this coming. Books all for all for good reasons. I don't want bad reasons. But there's stuff going on here too. Programming announcements we're going to record right after this show go on the Patreon next week we're going to book club. We do not part by Hong Kong which is her new novel that just came out if you haven't heard. Forgot she won the Nobel prize for literature last year. So Rebecca and I are going to talk about that book and maybe the wider Kong Ouvoir over there. He got one of those coming. Let's see over on First Edition. It's live. Yeah, it's live as of now when I'm recording and when people are hearing this. A two part first edition episode. Andy Hunter of bookshop.org came on to talk about the ebooks launch over there we're going to talk about it as well here. So we're going to cover the news, but got some stuff straight from the horror horse's mouth over there. One one nugget of preview. Rebecca. One of the things I asked him what was the surprise? What took a long time. And one of the things I found the most interesting is that PRH apparently. Did you ever see the movie Sneakers? You know the movie Sneakers, Robert Redford?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. Many years ago at the very beginning.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Of that movie, they get hired by a bank to try to break into it to check their security system. Like white hat hackers. Apparently PRH hires people like this for DRM to go try to crack DRM of the retailers of the E Books.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And so you have to go to. So I had no idea about this. So there's nuggets like that. Interesting conversation there. Also, I talked to Gretchen Rubin. You may know her of the Happiness project she runs for her community. A yearly challenge is this year the challenge is read 25 minutes a day in 2025 good reading challenge also turns out huge book nerd, Rebecca. Huge book nerd.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, that's not surprising. But we love to hear it. And I want to just pause on 25 minutes a day I think is like an. That's an excellent and very reasonable.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Reading goal.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, Seems reasonable for sure. So she was a lot of fun to talk to. So check that on First Edition Wherever Gear podcast. I'll put a link in the show notes there as well.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Great. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Let's do our first sponsor break and then I've got. I've got. I need a temperature check from a couple of things for you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Always my favorite. This episode is sponsored by this far My Story of Love, Loss and Embracing the Light by Allison Holker. Stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook provided by our sponsors at Harper Select. In this candid and emotional memoir, Alison Holker opens up about her incredible dance career, her relationship with Stephen Twitch Boss, and the resilience that has carried her forward after his death. A beacon of hope and comfort for anyone experiencing grief, especially unexpected loss due to suicide, Allison's story is an honest reflection on the pain of looking back on a complicated life and the resilience required to move into the future. This far is available everywhere. Audiobooks are sold. Again, stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from this My Story of Love, Loss and Embracing the Light by Alison Holker. Thanks again to Harper select for sponsoring.

[Unknown]

Today's episode is brought to you By Peachtree Teen Publisher of Among Serpents by Mark J. Gregson Fans of Frank Herbert and Jules Verne, who want some YA who want a new series to sink their teeth into, step forward. I got something for you. So tormented by tragedies of war and by betrayal from his own family, Conrad must prove his worth to all of the Skylands. Led by an unhinged explorer, Conrad embarks on a secret mission to turn the tides of battle before another island falls at the jaws of the Gigaton. It's a journey fraught with peril, deadly monstrosities, sabotage, stowaways, and with friendships pushed to the brink and little gentle romance that stirs, you know, gets the. Gets the juices flowing, gets the gears turning, Conrad will have to muster more than courage to weather the raging storms ahead. So make sure to check out book two in the above the black trilogy titled Among Serpents by Mark J. Gregson. And thanks again to Peachtree Teen for sponsoring this episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Flatiron Books, publisher of Ambition by Natalie Keller Reinert. Jules Thornton did not come to Florida horse country to make friends. She is intent on becoming a world class rider and trainer. Chasing her dreams doesn't leave much time for things like friends or vacations. And she certainly doesn't have time for Pete Morrison, though he is handsome and he is the heir to one of Ecola's grandest horse farms. But he also keeps beating her at events and for some odd reason, asking her out to dinner. As a new horse challenges her and her farm slips towards bankruptcy, she realizes her ambition can only take her so far. Jules will need to learn to trust her community or risk losing everything. This book is set in the world of three day eventing. It features an underdog character who is ambitious. Make sure to check out Ambition by Natalie Keller Reinert. And thanks again to Flatiron Books for sponsoring this episode.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, well, I made the mistake of logging on the other day just to the Internet.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Onto what?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Just the Internet. I was on Instagram, you know. Really was. I put the Neil Gaiman tweet from Dark Horse, you know, on the socials, like a Saturday. We generally don't do Saturday stuff, but I was like, this is big news. People want to know that. Put on Facebook or whatever. And because it was Saturday and nothing else to do, I start scrolling.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh no, just a horrible decision, Jeff. Facebook, you started.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, no, this was Instagram. I knew better than that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay, okay. All right. I'm just trying to determine the level.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Of intimacy I'm managing like the BR feed. The BR Pod feed. There's my own personal feed. And I don't know where I was. So whatever's happening. But it's a bunch of bookish content. Which I don't mind. Fine. At least it's not political stuff for me. And two things I saw. Two things that horrified me.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, no.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna put anyone on blast, but I need a temperature check. Are you ready for this? I'm.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I always.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What do you think of calling James by Percival Everett fan fiction?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Absolutely not.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Good. We're on the same page about this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

A work that's inspired by or is a creative rewriting of something is not fan fiction. Like it is just not fan fiction. I think by virtue of its creation is an amateur endeavor. Percival Everett, anything but an amateur. And that's not to knock amateurs. There is a time and a place for fan fiction. That is not what he is doing. He's also not attempting to remake Huckleberry Finn into a story for his own entertainment, which is my understanding of what a large part of fan fiction is. Let me further engage with this universe that I love or do my own wish fulfillment about what these characters would do if I were in charge.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Absolutely not.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That offends most of my sensibilities.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. In podcasts of bookride.com, if we've got our heads in the wrong orifice about that particular take. Again, I'm not an expert in fan fiction. I know it's a vibrant community. People get a lot of joy out of that. And I'm all for that. Have a great time.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Sure.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But there's something about that that rubbed me the wrong way. And I see that it rubbed you the wrong way too. Okay. So that's bothered me. Number one. Bothered me. Number two, there's still, you know, we're still within a month at the end of the year. So there's a lot of here my 10 best reads of the year, and people are doing this thing. So I saw one. I don't want to be too specific because maybe people could go find it. I read let's put lot of book number here. Like a lot.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Last year. And here are my top 10. And so I'm watching this person fly them off. And because I. Who I am. Who I am. I was like, okay, let's play how many white people?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Ah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And there were 10. All white people. Then I saw another one of these because I. Apparently I watched that. And the Borg is. He wants this so the next one.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I was like, listen to the algorithm.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Another one, I read a huge number of books and there are two of them over 10. And I had to turn. I had to throw my phone into Mount Doom. Like I had to go through more door and had to go throw my phone into Mount Doom. And I guess I shouldn't be surprised, we see what the bestseller list looks like. There was something about these people doing it and it wasn't like they read 15 books and it was everything at the end shelf at Target, like hundreds and hundreds of books. I was like, I don't know. So there you go. Never log on. Get rid of it all. We're going back to Hutts and Papyrus Scrolls. I'm not sure what to say.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I mean, I, my take on this is well established. This is what, this is a product of the algorithm. If you participate in the algorithm, if you let the algorithm recommend your reading choices to you and you are not actively curating those with an eye towards reading diversely and inclusively, by default, you're going to end up with a reading list full of white people, which means that your bests of the year are likely to be full of white people. And yeah, I'm going to assume nothing malicious or intentionally racist on these people's part, but this is an easy mistake to avoid. It is just not hard.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I, and I guess the truth is that the two people I saw, who knows how indicative it could have been, you know, unusual in a lot of ways, but it's almost more pernicious that they probably have no idea. It didn't even, it wasn't even a flitter across their mind to even consider the possibility of caring.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, that is one of, one of the many concerns that I have about algorithm driven social media is that it does serve you more of the same things that you have previously liked, more of the things that it believes you will engage with. And folks like that, who I'm going to assume these content creators are white people putting up a list, I think.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That would be a very fair guess at this point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's just. Even if you don't want to have the political conversation, which I believe we should have, but if you don't want to have the political conversation about why reading diversely matters, 40% of American adults, roughly 40% of American adults are people of color. Most of the people who live on this globe are not white people. So if you're trying to build your audience as a content creator, it behooves you to consider that the vast majority of your audience is not white people and to be interested in reading books by folks who are not white or if you're talking about movies, watching movies starring people, directed by people who are not white. All, like all of those things. This is what we mean when we talk about the fact that diversity is the right thing and it's also good for business.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. So again, this is not to put the whole content creator industry on blast. These are just my experience and two back to back things. But you know, every now and again I wonder what's interesting out there. And I'm sure there's interesting things and people say, I love this one or that one and great, I'm glad. But the experience of actually sort of just picking up and using it, disaster for my own personal sensibility there. So there you go.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I guess the silver lining there is that it reinforced your desire to spend less time in those places.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. Can't get away from it. So speaking of things you can't get away from, Dark Horse Comics did become the first, to my knowledge, I should say, of Gaiman's many publishing partners to announce no new future works. I'm choosing my words very carefully there because apparently there's still some things that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Under the Dark Horse, Norton has confirmed.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Norton has confirmed as well. I didn't see that. Well, that's very good to know. Not surprised about. Norton would say that, actually.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Good, great.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What should happen? I don't have another. I've got it. I've got to take for some of the reply people in the Facebook comments, but I'll save that until we're actually done with the news here, which I'm not sure what else to say about this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I don't, I don't know that there is. You know, it's been a couple of weeks since the big detailed piece broke in New York magazine with all of the terrible allegations against gay men. I will continue to say I wish that all of the companies and entities involved had acknowledged it right up front. I understand if you're running Dark Horse Comics, you have to take a couple weeks to get your legal ducks in a row to cancel contracts and, you know, cross all the T's and dot all of the I's so that you can make an announcement like this. But I think it goes a long way towards reader trust and consumer trust to acknowledge right up front we have seen these allegations against Neil Gaiman. We're looking into them, we take them seriously. We'll be back when we have more to say right. Come out with that as quickly as you can. But this is obviously the end result that one would hope for and that I hope we'll see additional publishers follow. So good job Dark Horse.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I guess he's got books with a bunch of different imprints. So like almost every house I think has some little it's sort of a Hoover, I think a largely Simon and Schuster if I remember correctly.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think there's eight HarperCollins has quite a few.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean we're looking at Morrow right here for American Gods. So there's more. I think we're going to hear more from this. Again, the more embed you are Norse Mythology, which is the biggest retelling of well, I don't want to do more saying what these things are. That was a Norton title over there. Just I think we need I need to do this to move. I need to get it off my podcast chest for the reply people by and large. Maybe not a surprise that people that are in the br socias, you know. Good. It hurts me to see this, but I understand this makes sense. I'm so sad. There are a lot more mourning and I think we were sort of tapped. We were talking about that to some degree. A couple of off the record conversations with people in books recently that felt similarly. Boy, this one really hurts. And we feel terrible for the people that were direct victims. But acknowledging like there's a wider sort of response happening of feeling betrayed and losing trust and grieving frankly to someone that a lot of people care about. The innocent and proven guilty is a legal determination and you can decide anything you want based on the information you get in order to do business with someone. That's not the standard that you need to hold, should or need any hold anyone accountable. If anything, the difficulty of proving these kinds of cases specifically makes that less useful as a moral being to bring to bear on a situation like this. Courts and evidence processing are not in favor of bringing folks like this to justice. I also would encourage anyone that is inclined to say something like that to read the damn article before you say it. And if you don't want to pony up to pay behind a paywall, that is your choice. And you get to shut up about commenting on the piece because it actually is more than allegations. It's a deeply reported piece that Lila Shapiro did. The kinds of smoking gun stuff you might want in a law and order trial scene is not really there. But some of that is the nature of the beast of these kinds of actions. I guess for lack of A better. Well.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And, you know, I think some of the smoking gun stuff is there. Shapiro at least reports having seen it. Like, we don't get to see screenshots of text messages. But she has seen text messages. Yeah, she has seen lots of evidence. And before you can go to press with a story like this, as a reporter, like Lila Shapiro is, you really do have to get your pants all the way on about what you have confirmed, how you have checked the facts, because there's a huge liability in publishing something like this if you haven't buttoned everything all the way up. So the. There's a lot going on here. But you're right that the two big pieces are like, innocent until proven guilty is a situation about the courts. It's not about how public opinion works and private businesses can do whatever they want. This is. Feels similar to me to how, like an independent bookstore that is a private business can decide to stock whatever it wants or not on its shelves based on authors say, homophobic attitudes. That is not a violation of the First Amendment. That's. That's not censorship. Censorship is the government coming after you. And I don't know if people willfully ignore those details or if they're just ignorant.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think it's some of them, honestly.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, neither one is great.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, neither one is great. So that's just a little, you know, let's. If. If those are the terms you're engaging with, I'm not interested in hearing from you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Also, that's the kind of. If you're out of one side of your mouth saying innocent until proven guilty, and you've ever looked at a woman in your life and said, I will. You know, I hope that if anything ever happens to you, you'll trust me and tell me, and I'll believe you. Innocent until proven guilty is the kind of shit people say that makes women feel that they can't come forward when they've been harassed or abused or assaulted, because it's very difficult in many circumstances to have physical proof, or if people have waited years to report things or have chosen never to report them, there are very good reasons for not doing that. So if you're, like, thinking of yourself as a good guy, and most of the people who make these kinds of comments are guys, so I'm gonna paint with a brush there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Not exclusively in this case, but, you know, broadly speaking.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, yeah. If that's the reply guy thing coming out of one side of your face, you don't get to say out of the other side of your face that you're an ally to Wynn.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And there's been, you know, Claire letters. Monsters dealt with this. Not specifically. There's. I've seen a few pieces dealing specifically with gay men.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And people of conscious, I would say, wrestling with it. If you feel like it's clear, never again will I touch a word. I understand that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Absolutely. I think there are people that I can. To say the books don't mean something to me is disingenuous and lying to myself, but it also means I can't look at them in the same way. There's a lot of different responses that fall under the realm of responsibly accountable, I guess, for participating, denying or otherwise. I don't know. You don't have to agree. You don't have to believe everything necessarily all the time, but you can kind of tell when someone's writing about this from at any angle, whether or not they actually care in a real way about doing something that's meaningful, even if you end up disagreeing with their take. I just feel like it's so easy to tell if you're dealing with a conscious at work versus not. It's just so easy to tell. Even if I don't agree with them, I feel like I can just tell.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I don't know if you saw the NPR piece, but one, there's an NPR reporter who's often on Pop Culture Happy Hour.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I did see that one. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And wrote a really, I thought, very thoughtful piece. Wrestling with this about and wrestling with what his personal answer to it is, at least right now, of, like, how to maintain the truth. That a lot of Gaiman's previous works were very important to him as a reader and that those works of art are important, but also to acknowledge what he believes to be the truth of these allegations and that he can't abide giving his future time, attention or money to those works. So, like, in that case, this person has kind of made the decision Dark Horse has made. Like the Gaiman books are staying on the shelf in his personal library for now, but he will not be picking up new Neil Gaiman books. He won't be watching future Neil Gaiman adaptations. And that's one way to solve it. But that it was a difficult thing to wrestle with, that it might be an evolving thing that he makes his decisions about and that we all deal with this in some way because Nobody's heroes are 100% pure. This is really on the high bad side of the kinds of things you might find out about someone who whose art has meant a lot to you? Yeah, and I'm. I don't have that relationship to Gaiman's work, but I take it seriously because I have had that relationship to other people's work and had to make my own choices about it. So, like, the wrestling with conscience is. I think that's the real thing that we want to have conversations around. Certainly.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Okay, let's see. Let's. There's a bunch of other news. Let's get to Bookshop. I think that's the big news of the week because there's a lot of. There's a lot of, like, tangly pieces that are interesting to dive into because the top level thing is actually fairly straightforward. You can now buy ebooks through Bookshop and read them in the Bookshop app. It's available in the App Store for Android and the iPhone. You have to buy them on the bookshop.org website. You can't buy them through the app for very familiar reasons, much like you can't buy a Kindle book through the Kindle app on your iPhone or iPad. Because Apple wants to. They don't just want to wet their beak, they want to get in the bird bath and wallow around in it and, you know, kind of splash around. Essentially they take 30% cut. Right. And there's only so many percent to take. If the publisher is reserving 60 to 70% and Apple takes 30, well, you can do the math about how much is left over for a retailer or seller like Bookshop, it's basically zero. So that's nothing new there. I poked around on the app. I talked to Amy about it. Me too. It looks good. It looks like a good experience. You and I are not in love with downloading another app and doing this. Do si. Do. Though I have to say I think I will for a while do it. When I'm buying ebooks through bookshop.org I need to go see if my beloved Raven Books is there and I can. Whatever quarters will fall out of the digital rights management transaction can roll their way. It's got about everything you'd want.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It looks good.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's easy to use in that conversation with Andy will hear about, you know, additional features and partnerships and everything. There's a little real brass tack stuff here, but largely it works in kind of way you'd expect. Ancillary questions are interesting. I think the ancillary questions are interesting. One thing you asked me that I asked him, which I did not, so we can talk about here is what prevents technically, politically, financially Reading bookshop ebooks on a Kindle because after all, you can forward a PDF, you can read your Libby books there. When you. And I use Edelweiss, you can forward those over there. There is. There is some sort of pipes that hook up for things that are not just Kindle books.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, something can be done. And this was a question from a civilian who was like, had seen the bookshop thing and was asking me like, I have a Kindle because it's the best e reader and it was cheap, but they wanted the option to. They were excited about the possibility of not buying their ebooks from Amazon exclusively and supporting indie bookstores. And then they were bummed that they can't read the bookshop ebooks on a Kindle. I think it's as we were saying behind the scenes, like, you can't read a Barnes and Noble ebook on the Kindle or the Kindle app. You can't buy a Kobo ebook and do it there. It's a DRM situation. And probably in this case, DRM provides some cover also for difficult political things. If it were technically more doable, Bookshop would have had to make some decisions about will we do it or not. Is it worth independent booksellers being mad that you can still. The money would still go to the independent booksellers from folks having purchased the bookshop ebook, but they would just be read inside the Amazon ecosystem. And anything that touches Amazon can be taken as betrayal by some indie book sellers. So probably the technology like saved them from having to make some.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think there's three possibilities. One is, well, there's two possibilities and one, there's. It's a Monte Hell problem. But the first one is drm. Drm, technologically possible is that is like literally, could it be worked out right?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Could it be done?

[Jeff O'Neill]

If no, then that's. No, that's the flowchart, I guess. If yes, then it's Bookshop and Amazon would both have to agree to allow it to happen. And I think that means neither of them would like. Both of them have reason not to, because to my understanding, I do not believe you can buy a regular ebook that's DRM from a different retailer and read it on a Kindle. I don't believe that's possible on podcastriot.com if you know of an exception. Again, if it's some New Zealand thing, I'd love to know about it. But that's sort of beyond this, you know, I'm sure there's other. There might be something where the EU gets involved. They like to meddle and stuff like this. Sometimes to people's benefit, sometimes not. But I think both parties have sort of reasons not to get involved. It's like kind of saying, would you like to trade children? I mean, technically possible. But neither party is really going to be saying yes to that for a while. Yeah. Because Amazon doesn't want this. Now again, I think both the opportunity and the obstacle for Bookshop is represented exactly in that civilian's question. Right. The Kindle, it's kind of. Do people even know it's an Amazon device? I mean, I think they probably do, but they don't think of it as being its own walled garden that you carry around in your purse or something like that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

People think of it, I think as a utility in the way that we think about our phones as a utility. So this person was asking me and it seemed a lot like how come I could get this app on an Android but I couldn't get this app on my iPhone? When we're used to being able to get apps sort of everywhere, I think that will be the big hurdle. The Kindle is dominant in E reading and so we're talking about folks who have non Amazon devices. Like I do my reading on an iPad. I know you've gone through phases where some of your reading happens.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm always unhappy with my E reading.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The search. Some people are looking for the journal that will change their life. You're looking for the perfect.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The perfect pair of jeans. You know, all this kind of stuff. For me, it's what is my. What is a durable E reading experience.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So for this person it's well, the next time my Kindle dies, I'll look at what the some tablet options are you get, but that's a high barrier to entry. On the other side. This is a lot better than previous independent bookstore ebook endeavors have been. Like to the tune of the fact that the New York Times headline about it is indie Indie booksellers will finally be able to sell ebooks. And it's like they have been able to for in like at least I think two different arrangements in the past that have all been terrible.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yep.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Where you've had to buy from a website and then connect all of the pipes to specific E reading apps. Like it's just been terrible and this is very seamless. This works the way that any other. If I wanted to buy an E book from Barnes and Noble or Amazon and have it show up in those apps on my iPad, that the Bookshop one works exactly the same way I have to go onto my, you know, like desktop browser to do all of those things as well for the same Apple taking a cut reason. So it's just going to Bookshop instead of going somewhere else. It shows up in the app on my iPad. It looks good, it's easy to use. That is all the things you want from a reading experience. But Bookshop is going to be fighting still against that. Not just the tide, but just the established dominance of Kindle that it's been out for more than a decade. Like most people I think who are going to try E reading have tried it and many, many of them have Kindles.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And if this could be the kind of thing if you are a serious ebook reader and have been side eyeing your relationship with Amazon for one reason or another, the way to go would be to get an Amazon tab or not Amazon, pardon me, an Android tablet of some kind like the Remarkable or the Books B O O X. There's some things out there that look like they're very good E reading devices. They're kind of E ink pads essentially. But since they're on Android, Android allows some things that the Apple's ecosystem really doesn't. And frankly it has an E reader like that. E Ink lightweight, long battery life, you know, you can read it in the sun because it doesn't require a backlight. All the reasons frankly that one would like an E reader. A lot of those E ink Android tablets do, you know, maybe you could. Maybe you want to flip the bit and go over into one of those. All of those situations though are just a lot more roast in your own coffee. They're just a lot more. Just be ready for that. It's not for grandma, I don't think.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, it's a lot of friction in the E reading experience. I also think there's a not small subset of folks who do their physical book buying in independent bookstores and get their ebooks from Amazon. Like most consumers buy from multiple places and they're doing that because it's, you know, they can trot down and pick up a hardcover but if they want to do an impulse purchase of an ebook, it's the easiest to do it on Amazon either through the app or because they have a Kindle. And so you're even looking at some dedicated independent bookstore customers who are participating in the Amazon ecosystem and you have to have a really big value proposition to get them out of that. Not like you also can't port your Amazon library over into the bookshop library. You can't do that. With any of them, I don't think. But that's a tough thing for Bookshop to be fighting against. But this is the best option that I have seen by leaps and bounds.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Not close. Not close. Yeah. And in some ways it feels like an easier lift because you're not competing with physical books in Bookshop. You know, the original bookshop.org proposition is you just are buying the same books, you get them mailed to you and you're just switching from Amazon's interface to Bookshop's interface. In a lot of ways, this is more complicated because of the Kindle device, because of the lock in that the hardware itself represents. Now, again, maybe those with ears to hear that are going to be this is the wrong metaphor because it sounds like pernicious, but seduced by the siren song of going away from Amazon, maybe that's enough. Maybe they will actually try to do it. Maybe. I think the answer for me is going to be just use my iPad. Don't worry about an E reading device. And the iPad's good enough for these sort of situations. And a lot of, you know, a lot of people have iPhones. It's right there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You can get the app. That's my case for the iPad mini is I've got half a dozen different reading apps on there and I, there's two I primarily use. But like I, it was easy to add Bookshop to that. If I just want to make my ebook purchasing go through Bookshop in the future, all I will have to do is remember where my digital galleys are, which is the Kindle app. Because folks, if you're in the industry and you don't know this already, digital galleys don't expire inside the Kindle app. That something about publishers DRM conflicts with now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Now they're gonna go fix it. Rebecca, thanks so much for that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I learned this like a decade ago and they haven't fixed it, so I'm not concerned. I think they know this and there's just such a we are edge cases. We're not worth problem solving for over here. But then if I wanna do my book purchasing through Bookshop, that's easy. You don't get the E ink, but that doesn't bother me. Whatever.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Let's see what else. I, I think it also tells the story of where ebooks are in the book buying consciousness right now. Again. And Andy says a lot of this in the first edition episode, but I think the New York Times coverage we link in the show notes bookriot.com listen gets to it as well, which is the indie bookstore. And the market writ large has come to a status quo with ebooks. They've been a steady amount of the market in terms of dollars, if not actually units. I think it's more units than is represented by dollars because they tend to be less expensive in sales and indie publishers and so on and so forth. But to the point where indie booksellers don't think of it as a threat. Now, again, they're not a monolith. Andy's careful to say that he kind of walks through the various camps that we see in that particular phalanx of booksellers. But I think by and large that no one today, you don't really see headlines say, like, the ebook is going to eat up print. If anything, I don't know if it's spreadges or horny Dragons or what. Maybe a combination of all of it. That Prince is. He seems more resilient today than ever. And in fact, that gets to one of the stories we're going to talk about here in a little bit now. Is that a. Is that a fan? Is that. Is that a kind of a phantasm, a mirage? I feel like there's a little bit of this. This new status quo of the primacy of the book because of the guilt edge or whatever. I feel like it's a mirage. I think it feels a little bit like a mirage. So I don't know. I don't know. I don't think it's gonna be like this in 15 years.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No. Well, and like how it is now, where we're at this sort of balanced place with publishing's relationship to ebooks is not how it was 15 years ago. Like, early in our.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Even when bookshop started, even five.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right. Like early in our publishing careers, it was, are ebooks going to kill publishing? You know, when Borders went out of business, the story was like, ebooks have done this. And it seems that the kids like to read in print Still. TikTok is certainly helping that all the spreads and special editions that you're talking about are shoring up print book sales. But all of that also, like, sort of tips into this value judgment about that print is better somehow than ebook reading or more valuable. And like, it might be monetarily more valuable. The margins on a hardcover book, I believe, are higher in most cases than the margins on an ebook. So publishers have financial reasons to want print to continue to be resilient. But a lot of the conversation I find strays into the zone of, well, aren't we just so glad that print books are still alive. And I just. Who cares? Let the kids read wherever they want.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think I've come down on I care for this reason is that the physical book itself does provide a bulwark against big tech hegemony when it comes to retail around books. And as we've seen maybe in the last 20 days, especially 10 days, especially.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

To whatever could you be referring, that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Much power in that few hands is a bummer. Like it's just not working out great from the old leather chair in which I sit right now. So the distribution, the sort of fragmentation of book outlets, the independence of print and not being as subject, algorithms aside, I mean it's influences, but it's not controlled and those things. The difference between control and influence is a huge one.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And if this were the conversation people were having about why they're glad that print books endure, I am much more open and supportive of that angle. But it's the vanilla scented, nostalgia infused print books, man, that is just not interesting. And that ebooks offer a really compelling and in many cases a great source of accessibility to readers.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. So at this point, if you are inclined to live that indie life in your three pronged format, reading life, audio, ebook and print, you have options now. You always had it in print. You know, depending on how you wanted, you can go through bookshop or you're a retailer or find one you like an order directly. But you have Bookshop there, you have Bookshop for ebooks and then for audiobooks you have Libro fm, which has their own relationship and they've been to bookstores. And the terms of that right now I could not tell you, but it is outside of the Amazon Apple, you know, trillion dollar corporation ecosystem. Libro has been a success as well. It frankly, it is the one big hole in the bookshop ecosystem, you know, unsaid in a lot of these pieces, including my interview with Andy, was frankly, it's not ebooks that have been the story of the last five years that aren't print. It's been audio. And I think that is a story to watch with Bookshop is if and when they're going to get into that. I asked Andy what's next and he's. I just whatever I can do to provide. So he's kind of of sidestepping that. In the New York Times piece, he said something extremely interesting that I wish he would have said to me because I would have asked that. He said a Goodreads competitor that put one of my graying eyebrows all the way to the roof. Because that makes a ton of sense to me. Yeah, a ton of stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It does. Especially after several of them crapped the bed at the end of the year. AI driven, Spotify wrapped style reading summaries. The whole last week of the year, all the book people in my Instagram account were like, oh my God, all of these actually use AI for things.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, we didn't talk about because we didn't do a lot of new stuff at the end of the year we were doing wrap ups and review. It's storygraph specifically you're talking about.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Was there another one? Well, Fable. Fable was really bad. So as a brief summary, Fable tried to mimic the Spotify wrapped, right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw this. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And it did things like, like it told one user, I'm paraphrasing, but it told one user something like, you read a ton of books by Mexican and black authors this year, but don't forget to mix some white authors.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh my sweet lord.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And storygraph uses AI technology, like functionally algorithms to make recommendations to you, like based on what you have already read and what other people. Exactly. What goodreads does, what you've already read, up against similar reading patterns from folks who have read books that are like the ones that you have read. Which like. I think some of the outrage on that end about storygraph is caused by confusion between artificial intelligence technology and generative AI. Yeah, generative AI, like ChatGPT algorithm, like.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Some of those cross matching things have been around for a long time.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes, exactly. Like generative AI is the stuff that like the author's guild is trying to protect against that plagia that potentially plagiarizes or steals from copyrighted material. Algorithms are like pattern recognition and pattern generating machines and we've had those for decades and decades. And anything like storygraph or Goodreads that takes what you have read and analyzes it and spits out other recommendations, is using some kind of algorithm or artificial intelligence technology to do that. It's not like, what did they think it was? Humans sitting there with their meat fingers?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't know. And this is where I run up against the edge of my understanding in terms of the tokens and the weighting and some of it is the data that's being used. It's such a palimpsest now that it's hard to extricate them all. And maybe that's okay because it's. In hindsight, you're looking in the rear view mirror and Say, maybe we should have thought about that a little bit more. I don't know. I will say as someone who I guess I find myself to be an interested bystander at this point in the AI LLM discourse. It is a hell of a show to watch the news cycle come out and now Open AI is saying Deep Seek used its models without permission. I was like, boy, that is. Those chickens didn't even get out of the roost before they came.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They just like turnabout Fair play.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They just, they just flew around the barn and came right back in. Oh my God, these chickens came back so fast.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Somewhere my mom is going. It doesn't feel so good when it happens to you, does it?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, that's right. Every Midwestern kindergarten teacher has a ready made aphorism for that. Can I tell you a quick using AI story real quick? Always good and good and bad. I think this is kind of where I am. I was doing research for something not germane to what we're talking about here. And I was struggling to find sources and I knew, I felt like there would be stuff behind the great academic paywall of JSTOR and LexisNexis and ProQuest and I'm no longer an academic. So I took that for granted. I would like to pay my local public institution for access to the library. I don't know if that's something a peer review future half baked ideas. Anyway, so I was like, okay, maybe I can use one of these LLMs just to find out the titles and then I can go down to the branch and see if they have them or figure out, even figure out what database I need to look at is a mess. So I punched in, I made a request and I got four things. Two book recommendations and two academic recommendations. Okay, the two book recommendations were not really recommendations. Like here are things about this. We're spot on. I looked them up, they're great. I ordered them from Thriftbooks. Shouts to them, this Ricky, not out of print. I think they're out of print, but like kind of under known. It was a few bucks each. Great. The two academic titles, complete fabrications, didn't exist.

[Unknown]

Oh really?

[Jeff O'Neill]

It took me like 30 minutes. The publications existed, but the titles didn't. They did not exist at all. The authors I think were, I mean a generic sounding author can be like maybe anything. I was like, that doesn't sound like the right feeling. It was complete hallucination. So that's kind of where I am.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think there's some stuff that that's happening, particularly with academic articles that folks were seeing citations come up for work that they never wrote. Definitely bugs in the system.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So that's kind of where it's like the book stuff I was using. As you might imagine, this is not the first time I've tried to Google for a book about something.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And these it genuinely gave me information. Not this, that was faster that I wasn't getting on my own. Like I started started with my Google fingers like I guess doing the normal roasting your own coffee of it. So that's the real. I don't know, it feels like a real chimera of utility and complete at this point. And I guess you just have to be careful out there for sure. It sold me two books and also I got it. I don't know. That's my story. I think it feels like for people like me and what I do, kind of useful. But you got to be real careful. And it's not even close to being infallible.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And I don't think it's close to being able to be a standalone resource for things like I've used it. I've used the models for travel recommendations or like over the weekend I was out of town and my plans for the morning got canceled because of rain. So I was like can you recommend a few things to do in and around this city for people this age who are interested in the following things? And it spit out some stuff that like I hadn't turned up in my Googling. But that was exactly what I wanted to go do that day. But I have to like go to that company's website, go olive oil tasting. And I'm like sure. Does this place actually exist? What are its hours like? You still end up at Google to do the thing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's like an intern and they have to check the intern's work. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But the idea like the suggestions were better than I would have gotten if I had just gone to that city's tourism board.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. So anyway, quick stories from the AI, the slow moving apocalypse or whatever's happening at this point. Let's see what we going to go next.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, let's mention, since we're on the AI team, we should just mention this new Authors Guild thing. So the Authors Guild understandably very concerned about the rise of generative AI and they have introduced something called the Human Authored certification that is attempting to make it easier for writers to distinguish their work from AI generated slop. So currently this certification is available for writers who are members of the Authors Guild. You can submit your work and have it certified with this little human authored seal. And consumers, I'm not sure if you can do it right now, but eventually consumers will be able to also go onto the human authored site from the author's guild and search like a book's title to confirm that it was human authored. I both completely understand this and don't think it matters at all.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's a little bit of building a sandcastle with the tide coming in. I think there could be something like this in the future where, you know, we have, you know, on movies, we have ratings on food, we have nutritional information. I think this is going to be an arms race that you're not going to win.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And I think it's going to, it's going to need to be nuanced. Like right now there is some controversy in the film world. The fact that like the brutalist used, like the, the producers of the brutalist used some AI technology to improve the Hungarian accents of some of the actors in the film and to like make, make it sound like they were more proficient than they actually were. Is that, does that mean that the whole movie is now not human authored or are we trying to distinguish between.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Spell check or grammar check?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right. Like if I go it right, if you use Grammarly, which is AI or if I think what it's really trying to guard against is like I go online, I want to find a travel guide to Italy and instead of Rick Steves, it serves me something by Steve Rick.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That is AI generated. And you know, if it's a consumer protection situation, I'm in favor of that. I think we are going to need consumer notices about the end consumer education about these kinds of things. This feels more like it's about author feelings than consumer protection. And that's going to serve the authors more than it's going to serve the consumers. And there's many, many more consumers than there are writers.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Okay, let's do another sponsor break.

[Unknown]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

Onyx Storm has been unleashed. It's out there. Lots of interesting anecdote, target points. We talked about this a little bit. A friend of the pod at Pango Books sent us some information about this is the secondary market sales. Pango Books is a book retailer. They've got a lot of used books as well. You can sell them back and everything else but it shows the prices of the deluxe editions on their marketplace over time. So this is goes back was this 90 days? I'm not even sure. I don't see the the X axis here. But the long story short is at the first couple we Talked about this 250ish we saw 250. 250 bucks people were getting and it stayed like that way for a while. But as of the most recent data points we're down to 80.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. So your investment in Beanie Baby Storm has has gone down by half already at this point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Do you think there's going to be an Apple docudrama in 10 years about the spread storm in publishing?

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, I don't think so. I don't think it rise to the level of a we work business Disaster story. This from Renee Powers to make sure I got that the name right there. Who wrote in to say two Also we get the first sale the first week of sales data. Onyx Storm broke records in Circana's. You know it's going back to 2004 for adult hardcover. Over 1.2 million of the deluxe editions were sold and 173,000 of the standard edition. 10 to 1 deluxe edition to standard edition sales at this point get those five extra bucks. I guess that represents $5 million at least. Now of course that doesn't include the people doing on audio or ebook, but I think that deluxe. I'd love to know how skewed the format distribution is for Onyx Storm because of this particular phenomenon.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I was in a Barnes and Noble last week and then a local bookstore in my travels as well and both of them only had the deluxe edition displayed. The print runs are higher for the deluxe editions. The publishers want those to be the ones that sell. I think it's just harder to find the standard edition. There are fewer of them and retailers are at least from what I have seen only devoting shelf space to one format and it's the higher margin format. So I don't know that it's that that it's so driven by consumers being like like making the choice between deluxe and standard. But also the folks who are going to pre order this are probably much more likely to want the deluxe edition than somebody who's waiting three years down the line once O'Neill's razor has been completed to read through these titles.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I should say too that the information we're talking about from Pango, from Renee, that was the Target special edition. So the specialist specialist, the double extra Platinum Premiere plus over there. But already that's it's going to revert to basically sticker price or below because there's just so many. I mean. Yeah, there's just so many like this not going to be investment like any anyway, whatever. Enjoy.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Bookshops are still full of Twilight books is all I'm going to say.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I'm not sure I have anything else to say there. I think we're interesting in an interesting time. Like is this going to be peak Empyrean for this reason one is, you know, you've already broken records so there is regression in the mean possibility though the last book in a series tends to rejuvenate. What's different here is this is going to be the longest pause between books. Yarrows has said she hasn't even started writing the fourth one seems to me if this is the kind of the things I'm seeing from her being said in public suggest to me that in private she's even more strung than I.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Think she's having a hard time. She's under a lot of pressure.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I hope she and Colleen Hoover have a weekly chat because there's not too many people that can commiserate about this. Yeah, but it's going to be a while until the next one and you could I could see a world in which this is high tide. I don't know if I'm going to bet on that, but I could see a world in which this is high tide.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It also seems to me that the reader response to this has been a little less excited like it's not as beloved as the first two books. Folks are saying it's not quite as good. That's pretty common for books in the middle of a series. But if it feels to folks like the story is slowing down or it's not as compelling as the first two books and there's a longer wait and you lose some momentum on the way to the fourth and fifth installments, very possible I think that this is the high water one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean we've seen it happen. I mean the diversion series is the one that comes to mind in which that thing went out with a whimper, not a bang. The email we got we got a few emails with their Onyx Storm takes from listeners which thank you podcastookriot.com appreciate it. Generally pretty they seem to be I would say in aggregate if I was to Rotten Tomatoes at like a B plus.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But I think they were saying that on the sentence level they felt like it was a better written book because there's maybe more time more time to edit it. I don't know in terms of growth story you and I have talked about on the bonus we did that the quality subjective of course of the sentence and story and editing whatever may not be the thing that people who really love this are there for and that that is better may not mean they like it better. It may mean because the story isn't as, I don't know compelling or not hitting the tropes they want or whatever the beat story beats they want that it could be to most readers sort of sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph eyes a better written book but still be less popular because you know that's not what folks are necessarily their first screen on. Why they're excited about this book is like this is apparently it's like not like he's at least 4 inches, 6ft tall.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Apparently it's also less spicy and someone on the Patreon was, was saying it's less spicy or there's less of the spicy sex scenes for reasons related to the plot. This is all that I know. But also if there's less of that. And that's one of the primary selling points of these books.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I think that's really interesting to think about the diminishing returns or if you're going to have tensions, you always have to have the middle of the romance. Right. Where there's a part for some reason in a five book series that are 600 pages a piece. The middle is a thousand pages. Yeah, it's a dry spell. Melissa Febos should write about that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Melissa Febos is the only person I want to read writing about Romantasy from here. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Maybe Gia Tolentino.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So interesting. I mean the sales. I. I don't know what I was expecting. If you said is it going to set a new record for print, 10 to 1, deluxe to standard, I think I would have come in on the under. I would have been wrong. So there you go. I mean, surely this record will only last Until September.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Until September 9th.

[Jeff O'Neill]

September 9th. September. When is that? Is that a ponytail I see swinging in the distance coming out of the mist?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Am I detecting your Mickey Mouse watch?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Is someone swimming in the lap pool with a Mickey Mouse watch on?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Put on my tweed coat with my elbow patches.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Someone, Someone has now realized that there's hidden messages in Georgia O'Keeffe's paint. Anyway, Dan Brown's next global multi tiered thriller. What is multi. I'm reading now verbatim the eight. What does multi tiered thriller mean?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Who knows?

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's like a cake.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

As far as I'm concerned, a press release about a new Dan Brown book just needs to say New Dan Brown book and the release date.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yep. It's called and I kid you not.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is so good.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. The secret of secrets.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We were kicking around alternatives yesterday. The conspiracy of conspiracies. Yeah, everything they don't want you to know.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Noted Harvard symbologist.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Robert Langdon is back. He starts in Prague. I was just there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Amazing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

He goes to a lecture. An emerging. An emerging love interest is giving a lecture.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He likes the smart ladies.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Listen, who among us is going to go on a global globe trotting adventure, evading a would be assassin, cracking some codes, pondering the depths of human consciousness and I'm reading nothing else about it until the book comes out. The R is backwards in the second secret. Should we symbologize that? What would Robert Langdon mean of that?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Backwards are things are not always as they appear. You know, the backwards mirror image that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Was used by Socrates, you know, one of those kinds of things.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You texted me this at 6am your time earlier this week with a giant red alarm emoji, which, folks, if you're new to this podcast, Jeff uses three exclamation points a year.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I used it up. I have this app called Keep Keep Calm, and it allows you four emoji uses a year. And that warranted one. I'm not. I don't apologize.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, no. It was amazing. I was like, finishing my coffee, starting my work day, and I was like, oh, Jeff's up early. He's. What's he doing? Oh, it's Dan Brown, baby.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's very few things, but that certainly crosses the emoji meridian for me. I put it on the BRPod Instagram and the caption was, oh, no, slash.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. We will be reading this on September 9th. We will be recording a podcast about it on September.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Absolutely. So we are very excited. Thanks to all of you who. Who sent it our way. We did, of course, see it. But I do appreciate that we were in the loop.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Suggestions from fans in the Dan Brown hive for things I should keep track of on this reading. I think the last time there was Dan Brown book. Yeah. I kept track of a number of times we referenced the Mickey Mouse watch and the number of times he swam laps. But yeah, let's build our Dan Brown bingo cards together.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think that's right. Let's see. Anything else? We're running a little bit long. We got to get to frontless foyer. Let's do Heroes of the Week. Heroes of the Week for me, before.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We get out of here, Heroes of the Week are the folks at Octavia's Bookshelf, which is in Pasadena, California. It was spared by the fire, but has become a real hub of community support in the couple of weeks since the wildfires hit. Let's see. Yeah, the Eaton fire is the closest. 27 lives were lost there. And the folks at Octavia's Bookshelf were, you know, reaching out. Police were driving through the neighborhoods, telling people to evacuate. All sorts of scary things were possible. And then the owner of Octavia's Bookshelf gets online. She goes on Instagram, where not everything is bad, Jeff. And she says, I have wi fi and I have power. And if you need to come here to like, to get online or to do anything, you need to do. I'll be here all day. They packed up all the books. They put them in the attic. Books were replaced by items that people were donating to victims of the fire. So they just kind of turned the store into a resource center. People who had extra things to donate donated them. Toothpaste, diapers, cat food, water. Volunteers from the community showed up. And then folks who needed those things were able to show up at Octavia's Bookshelf and get those items and get some shelter and some water and go on the Internet to find information that they needed in order to take their next steps for getting through the devastation of the fires. This is really beautiful community mutual aid action and a really like gorgeous example of bookstores. Thinking outside of what can a bookstore do? There have been a lot of wonderful literary related things. Obviously, like some bookstores and libraries were impacted by the fires and we want to think about how to support those. But the literary community can do a lot more than just support things by throwing books at them. And the folks at Octavia's Bookshelf seem to really get that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And if you wanted to, Octavia's Bookshelf does have a bookshop.org page. So you could. There you go with your physical book buying dollars. Or, you know, if you're going to go take bookshop.org out for a spin for ebooks, you could select the store there. One thing to know, if you do go through the bookstore page on bookshop.org and buy an ebook, they get 100% of the margins. It goes all to the bookstore. So that's very nice to do. An easy way to do that for a little while. Frontless foyer. Thriftbooks.com is sponsoring this. Did I think I actually bought. So one of the things I reread in January was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, who was kind of a bastard, I should say. Bad opinions. But I love the movie starring Gene Wilder. And I had occasion to reread it and I will not recommend the book. I had never read it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The move, Gene. It's all Gene Wilder. Gene Wilder makes that movie for me. That is the magic. I mean, the idea is kind of cool. Inspired by Roald Dahl's experience growing up in England. Like there were these chocolate factories that did have trade secrets and they'd send spies into each other. That's a cool idea.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I did not know that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Very wild. But it's all Gene Wilder. So I read that. But I got, you know, a cheap edition from Thrift Books. They had both new and used. Rebecca, I don't know if you knew this. Did you know this?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's wonderful. I did know that but the folks.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Don'T all know that and so especially like kids books, you're buying stuff or we have a new O'Neill in the family. Not mine directly a nephew and we were stocking their library with books and get some used ones put them on their thriftbooks.com movies, music, DVDs, Blu Rays, other things Before I kick it back over Rebecca, what else am I reading list. Let me see here. I read this book called Defy by Sunita Sa. She's a researcher in defiance, which there may be reasons I'm interested in that at this point and I I thought it was interesting. I didn't feel like I had my the scales dropped from my eyes. I talked about Life in Three Dimensions by Shigeru Oshii and we'll talk about that more when it actually comes out. It's available. Stay tuned for a first edition. Coming near you on that. But I think it felt like articulations of things that made sense to me. It wasn't a lot of turns out it was oh okay, that makes sense. The opening anecdote is a reaction framing of this very famous Stanford experiments where you like press a button and people get electrocuted. Is about consent and her reading is yeah, that's it's bad. You hate to see it. But it's maybe not as straightforward in terms of how long people did ask wait, what happens? Do I need to do this? They pause. What does defiance look like? How to lean into it? What the structures are different kinds of defiance. It you know, are you defying because of shame or because of morality? Are you defying. You know, there's reasons you get it and those things work differently. I thought it was pretty cool. I guess I was a feeling I was expecting to come out feeling a little more energized and activized by you know, I can do something with this. I really didn't. Which again academic research doesn't need to do that. It has to exist for its own. But following up Life in three Dimensions were like oh yes, I have words to talk about a thing that feels real and true for me. Didn't have that same experience here but a Kuba. I will say Defy by Sunita Shah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's a high bar kind of self help.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A tough, tough rebound pop psychology.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You almost need a buffer zone if you have just read something like life in three dimensions or I don't know 4,000 weeks. You need to like pause while you're still in the glow of how good those books are because nothing. It's really tough for things to stand up by comparison.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What were you into?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, in addition to the new Hancock, I just finished Y2K by Colette Shade, which is a collection of essays about like social and pop culture around Y2K, which she captures as 1997-2008. It was fine to good. It felt to me like she couldn't quite decide what the book was. Parts of it feel like reaching for the 90s by Chuck Klosterman, like kind of a philosophy social history. And then there's a lot of her in it as well, like a lot of personal memoir type stuff. And I would have liked one or the other, but to me they didn't mesh like they combining them did not work super well to move between talking about how the covers of the magazine covers for teen magazines in the 90s contributed to her having an eating disorder and like her own personal stuff. But then also here's the social significance of why all the clothing looked space age. Like just wasn't. It was. It felt a little uneven to me. I did pick up some fascinating tidbits I texted you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I like that one a great deal that you sent.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, that Google image search is a product of that super low cut green dress that JLO wore to the Video Music awards. Oh, I remember 99. Who among us does not remember that? That Google engineers realized so many people were searching for that dress that they needed a new way for people to look for images in Google. So that kind of stuff was really interesting. It was a good plain read. I would give it like a B.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, okay with that. Thanks to ThriftBooks.com for sponsoring Frontless Foyer and the BR Podcast writ large. You can find shownotesbookriot.com listen shoot us an email podcastookriot.com check out the Patreon. Let's see the most recent thing over there that's up at this moment was the hot list check in which was a good time over there. And you can look forward to our discussion of We Do Not Part by Hong Kong appearing there pretty quick after this show publishes. Rebecca, we'll talk to you later.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this excerpt from the audiobook of this My Story of Love, Loss and Embracing the Light by Allison Holker. Thanks to Harper select for sponsoring the podcast.

[Allison Holker]

Stephen has one hand on the wheel and his other hand is squeezing mine as he listens to the lyrics that repeat over and over how we're stronger together. Tears stream down his face and he raises my hand to his lips to kiss it. Stephen is not a natural crier. He has a resting smiley face. Seeing him so outwardly moved by my gift makes me deliriously happy. We have never seemed more in sync, as if the universe is confirming our unwavering bond. At one of the next galleries we visit, we stumble upon a romantic sculpture of two humans hugging and dancing. We buy the piece, agreeing that it beautifully embodies our connection. We are so stoked to imagine the sculpture enjoying pride of place in our home and then being passed on to our kids and their kids as a treasured heirloom. The rest of the weekend passes in a beautiful blur. We talk a lot about the upcoming year. We are excited about the future and all the projects we have in the pipeline. Stephen has already shot an ad campaign for Gap Inc. And we are being offered two shows on major networks. We've collaborated on a children's book. I have a Barbie home makeover show for HGTV in the works. We are actively engaged in growing our family, if you know what I mean. And we do what it takes to conceive a child in Laguna. We're constantly talking about having more kids and taking stock of our lives together. We feel truly blessed. At the hotel, I opened Steven's anniversary gift to me. It is a gorgeous black Prada suit, a notable departure from the hoodie or cool kicks that I can count on from him. Less than 72 hours later, Stephen is dead of a self inflicted gunshot wound. And I'll spend the next year looking at that exquisite suit, our final weekend and every single memory that preceded it through a different distorted lens. Was he deceiving me during our time in Laguna? During our whole marriage? The storybook love that everybody said we had. Was any of it real? The questions are endless. Did he buy me a black Prada suit so I'd have a nice outfit to wear to his funeral? And if he did, was it one last gesture by an incurable romantic or just messed up beyond belief? How long had he lived with the thought of killing himself? Now when I watch the video I recorded of him in the car, Steven's face is different from how I initially registered it. I look at his expression as he's listening to the song and he's somewhere else. What made him believe that suicide was an appropriate response to whatever he was going through? That Stephen would die by his own hand? Is incomprehensible to anyone who knew him. I am completely blindsided. We are both people who spread positive energy, who are known for being joyful, who are literally dancing through life. Stephen had never given me a reason to believe that he didn't appreciate the beauty of life, the gift of existing, as much as I do. His suicide is an unnatural disaster, A mega fire set by his hand that sweeps through our past, present, and future, reducing to ash every memory, plan and dream that we shared. Stephen always saw himself as the protector of me and the kids, our superman. And in the wake of his death, I feel a duty to be his. So when possible clues emerge in his phone, in his nightstand drawer and his shoeboxes for why he did what he did, my instinct is to keep them buried as he had. I want so much for him to be remembered as the beautiful light in the world that he was. Even though his suicide casts our family into complete darkness, a total eclipse of the heart, it is difficult to reconcile my feelings. I'm sad that Steven would leave us this way because he was truly a good person, an incredible husband and father who positively influenced everyone with whom he came into contact. And yet his actions are deeply traumatizing to me and our three children. Although I don't want him to be remembered for his final decision, I cannot ignore the impact it has had on our lives. His unbearable pain becomes our family's collective cross to bear. My kids and I will never get over his death. And yet we must go forward. How do we manage that? Therapy is helpful. So too is dance. I'm not sure I fully appreciated until recently I how dance has been the one constant for me in a life full of ups and downs. I've always been able to tell stories of love and loss and pain and exhilaration through movements of my body that heal and reveal. It's common for the people left behind by suicide to wonder how they failed their loved ones. At first, I wallow in the what ifs. What signs did I miss? What could I have done better so that Stephen would still be here? But then someone turns my perspective inside out by asking, how long had Allison been carrying him through the darkness? It's an interesting thought. Instead of focusing on what had gone wrong, what about all the things we had done right? I'll never know or understand why Stephen decided to leave us. How his journey and mine inexplicably, irrevocably diverged from better together to forever apart has been a vast and harrowing distance to bridge. But what choice have I had. I cannot, will not let his decision define the rest of my life. I have come this far with milestones and milestones still to go.