The 2025 Read Harder Challenge, How Publishing People Feel about Publishing, and more

Summary

Book Riot - The Podcast

Episode: The 2025 Read Harder Challenge, How Publishing People Feel about Publishing, and More
Hosts: Jeff O’Neill & Rebecca Schinsky
Date: December 15, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this year-end episode, Jeff and Rebecca dive into Book Riot's annual Read Harder Challenge for 2025, dissect the latest trends and findings from the Publishers Weekly publishing industry survey (focusing on diversity, job satisfaction, and artificial intelligence), and offer candid opinions on the rise of algorithmic book culture—including Gen Z book clubs and the commodification of reading. They also share poignant stories about audiobook history and current reading picks. As always, the conversation is bookish, witty, and thought-provoking, filled with insider publishing banter and smart, accessible analysis.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Year-End Reflections & Upcoming Episodes

• Hosts discuss the coming year, their anticipation for high-profile book releases (Ann Patchett, Lauren Groff, George Saunders), and the return of beloved Book Riot programming.
• Upcoming special episodes: "Best of the Rest" (favorite non-book things from 2025) and "Favorite Books of the Year."
  • [01:04] “We’re through the thick of year end… we have some regular news story things to do.” — Jeff

2. The 2025 Read Harder Challenge

• Book Riot’s annual reading challenge encourages participants to expand their reading horizons—24 tasks designed to diversify and deepen reading habits.
  • Tasks include reading a microhistory, YA by a Latine author, a book from the Zero to Well Read podcast, or a romantasy with a queer or BIPOC main character.
  • The challenge is flexible; participants can combine tasks and interpret prompts creatively.
• Clarification on "Harder": Not about quantity, but about intentional, mindful, and diverse reading.
  • [06:05] “The Read Harder Challenge is about expanding your reading life… we do it by offering 24 tasks which you could shake out to be two per month.” — Rebecca
  • [07:18] “There’s a lot of misunderstanding about the ‘harder’ in Read Harder… You’re probably not going to be able to walk into a bookstore with just this and fill them all out.” — Jeff
• Emphasis on inclusivity and expansion, not on gatekeeping or mere box-checking.
  • [08:26] “The thought behind it is… this one is about enriching your reading life in some way.” — Rebecca

3. Publishers Weekly Annual Industry Survey: Diversity, Satisfaction, and AI

• Slight increases in demographic diversity and job satisfaction.
• Persistent pay disparities: women dominate the workforce numerically, but men, who are more likely to be in management, are still paid more.
  • [12:24] “There are a lot more women that work in publishing, but men get paid more... that is a dynamic that’s true in almost all American workforces.” — Jeff
• Younger/newer publishing workers (6 years or less experience) are more diverse and report high job satisfaction, though their pay remains below the New York living wage.
  • [13:36] "Their diversity is higher in that group of people. Fewer of them are white than in folks who’ve been in the industry longer..." — Rebecca
• The conversation acknowledges “steady as she goes” progress in DEI—initiatives continue, but often more quietly due to the political climate.
  • [17:56] “It’s pretty like steady as she goes right now… the initiatives are quieter because no one wanted to draw fire, especially early in this Trump administration.” — Rebecca
• AI’s growing impact and concern:
  • Marked increase in concern that AI will hurt publishing (54% last year, 72% this year).
  • New employees worry about job loss; more experienced staff fear copyright issues and dropping quality.
  • Fragmented understanding of AI’s impact—ranging from workflow tools to existential questions about art and originality.
  • [20:49] “The brainstorm-y let it write it for me…I am much, much less [optimistic].” — Jeff
  • [23:27] “The big, scary giant monster under the bed is—can an LLM produce full-length publishable manuscripts… do all the same things [as a human]?” — Jeff
  • [24:30] “It seems to me less likely that AI is coming for high art… but increasingly possible that it will come for the more genrefied, formulaic kinds of fiction…” — Rebecca

4. AI’s Real-World Effects: Hallucinated Books & Research Pitfalls

• Librarians frustrated by patrons demanding books “recommended” by AI but which do not actually exist (“hallucinated” titles).
  • [34:25] “Librarians are really tired of being accused of hiding books from you that don’t exist… because the LLMs are so good at hallucinating book titles.” — Rebecca
• Advice: Always verify AI recommendations via secondary sources (Goodreads, Amazon, Bookshop, etc.)
  • [35:14] “If you found it through an LLM, do a quick spot check… because they’re fake.” — Jeff

5. The Commodification of Reading & Book Clubs for Gen Z

• News: Hello Sunshine (Reese Witherspoon’s company) is launching “Sunny Reads,” a Gen Z-focused book club.
  • The hosts are deeply skeptical of generational marketing and the blending of reading with lifestyle consumerism.
    • [37:36] “As a headline, I did sort of recoil briefly… I’m opposed, generally speaking, to thinking in terms of generation.” — Jeff
    • [41:34] “Hello Sunshine… is launching a Gen Z book club… This is the late capitalist nightmare of this press release for me.” — Rebecca
  • Community-building around reading is often replaced by brand partnerships (Coach, luxury totes), diluting authentic literary experience.
    • [42:32] “This is not about connecting. It is about selling you something… it is capitalizing on readerly identity to sell goods.” — Rebecca
  • The hosts discuss the risk of affluence and market targeting distancing reading culture from authenticity and accessibility.

6. Book Adaptations & Literary-Cultural Synergy

• Mention of Broadway musical theaters as potential venues for book merchandising, given their target demographics—suggesting the powerful synergy of adjacent literary and entertainment experiences.
  • [44:19] “Someone sent to me—you need to think about Broadway musical theaters… almost exactly the same demographic [as readers].”

7. Reading, Algorithms, and Social Media

• Distinction between algorithm-driven discovery (BookTok, Book Club picks) and deeper, more sustaining book conversations.
  • [47:02] “If you read more books, you will want less social media has been my experience.” — Rebecca
  • Hosts encourage finding connection through books outside of algorithmic or commodified environments.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Read Harder Challenge:

  • “[The challenge] is about enriching your reading life in some way… you don’t have to read any more books than you read last year for this challenge to be a success.” — Rebecca [08:26]
  • “Not unlike Zero to Well Read… it is the idea of getting out of a certain comfortable, unexamined, [space].” — Jeff [07:18]

• On AI Anxiety:

  • “The big scary giant monster under the bed is—can an LLM client produce full-length publishable manuscripts… And that's the question or can it ever.” — Jeff [23:27]
  • “I think one of the possibilities is that… AI is coming for art… seems to me less likely that AI is coming for high art… but increasingly possible that it will come for… formulaic kinds of fiction.” — Rebecca [24:30]

• On Generation-Based Book Marketing:

  • “I’m opposed, generally speaking, to thinking in terms of generation… it’s a gross level of sorting that I find myself really resistant to...” — Jeff [37:59]
  • “This is the late capitalist nightmare of this press release for me… This is not about connecting. It is about selling you something.” — Rebecca [41:34]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [05:13] — What is the Read Harder Challenge and how does it work?
• [11:45] — Publishers Weekly industry survey: diversity, pay, job satisfaction.
• [19:01] — Rising AI concerns: job loss, copyright, and quality.
• [34:25] — Librarians struggle with ‘hallucinated’ AI book titles.
• [37:36] — Discussion of Hello Sunshine’s “Gen Z Book Club” and the commodification of reading.
• [44:19] — Synergy between books and entertainment spaces (book adaptations/theaters).
• [47:02] — Social media and reading: which influences the other?

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Frontlist Foyer & Annotated Corner: Staff Picks and Literary Anecdotes

Rebecca’s Recent Reads

• Feast on Your Life by Tamar Adler: A collection of short, daily food essays focused on finding delight amidst depression and struggle—“a nice time of year for, like, let’s just sort of sink in and swim around in someone’s nice feelings about food and family…” [48:50]
• H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald: A celebrated memoir about grief and training a goshawk—poignant, beautifully written, and recommended ahead of an upcoming adaptation.

Jeff’s Literary Story

• Mini-annotated: The Untold Story of Audiobooks
  • The invention of modern audiobooks: Barbara Holdridge and Marianne Mantell founded Caedmon Records in 1952, beginning with an iconic Dylan Thomas recording (“A Child’s Christmas in Wales”).
  • Their story is one of innovation, happenstance, and the enduring power of recorded literature.
  • “22 years old in 1952… they thought the old people were dumb and they wanted to disrupt the media industry.” — Jeff [52:54]
  • “Audiobook trailblazers, Christmas, nostalgia, the history of media…” — Jeff [57:50]

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Conclusion

This episode of Book Riot Podcast is a comprehensive, lively year-end check-in on the reading world—brimming with smart commentary on the meaning of “read harder,” the evolving (and quietly contentious) state of publishing, existential questions about AI and the future of authorship, wariness about the commercial co-opting of book culture, and loving celebrations of new and classic books. Candid, insightful, and often wryly humorous, Jeff and Rebecca continue to speak directly to passionate, mindful readers looking for more than trends or branding—readers who want to think, connect, and, above all, read with intention.

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Transcript

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

Eligibility vary by state. Foreign this is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff o'. Neill.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Today we're through the thick of year end. We have some regular news story things to do. I was reading this Morning Publisher Weekly's Publishers Weekly 2026 Adult Spring Preview. We're turning the calendar in our head a little bit, Rebecca. We're recording some stuff that's going up next year. Suddenly it was December and now it's 2026.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I know. I got the galley for the new this is a galley brag. There's an Ann Patchett book coming out in June. I got it this week and it was everything that I could do not to be like, you know what, Ann Patchett, let's go this afternoon.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The galley brags right now are some order of the new Groff. The Saunders, the Patchett. And there was something else I've been seeing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh yeah, I've got the Saunders too.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I've got Saunders. I do have Sam. Anyway, so we're looking forward to those things there. Let's see programming notes. We're recording it tomorrow but I'll go on the Patreon either tomorrow early next week for this show the Best of the Rest which we talk about the things from 2025 that we enjoyed that can be movies, TV, music, food, clothes, travel experiences, gadgets, items. That's it. Thought technologies. I'm not sure what else could be included this but anything that's not a book, anything that's not is eligible for that over there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I had fun calling my list this morning.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I you know I don't I need to get out more. My list was hard to come up.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

With this year I keep a so we both Love the bear notes app. Bear like the animal bear. And I started keeping a Best of the rest note for the year like every year that I start as the new year turns over because otherwise I also don't remember. Like, I keep my media list of things I've watched, but otherwise I'm like, did I like a new snack this year? I don't know. But as I have a like ah, these cookies, it just, it just goes in my best of the rest folder.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, that's true. Chronicling is its own problem. I'm not sure that even if I chronicle diligently, I would have a lot in my logbook. You know, Captain's log, star date 2025. We did pistachio cream every day. Pistachio cream, I guess, I guess to spoil that a little bit also. This will hit the feed Monday the 15th, but on the 16th, on Tuesday in the 0 to well read feed, we're going to be talking about A Christmas Carol by one Charles Dickens. And let me tease that a little bit, Rebecca. This might be the most influential book we've ever talked about ever. And you and I together doing the backstory, which I didn't know a lot of this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I didn't either. It's been fun to read about. I got a Penguin Classics edition which like Penguin Classics, might low key be my MVP of this first season of Zero to well read like a handful of the books that we've talked about. I've had Penguin Classics with like great introductions and tons of information. This is not what I imagined our first Dickens book would be. So it's kind of an interesting situation to be balancing the background of Dickens up against really just like the background of this one. Very influential work. But it was a pleasure to reread. I think it's been quite a while since I read it and I'm very excited that we're going to be able to talk about that in the feed.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I don't want to step on that show, but I don't know that we'll do the full Dickens treatment because it is best left for A Tale of Two Cities or David Copper fulfilled or great expectation. I'm just naming guys Oliver Twist. But then you start thinking about his again. Come listen to us talk about Dickens and the Christmas Carol over there. But there's so much around this one book alone that's going to be fascinating. So that's been a lot of fun over there. Then I guess we're kind of cannonballing towards the end of the year in this feed. We will do the books we missed. That's a Patreon episode, right?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's a Patreon episode. Next Wednesday in the main feed will be our favorite books of the year.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And we're going to talk about a bunch of our favorites. And then all of the editors will rotate through and share a few of their picks each. We recorded those segments with them earlier this week and it was super fun.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Okay, let's get into the news of the week. The first thing on our list is a book riot internal project. A long running annual event, really, the Read Harder Challenge, which is a reading challenge. If you guys don't know what a reading challenge is, they've been around for really since our blogging days. Maybe before this. Is there a history that read like, were they doing reading challenges in 1880?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I've not seen a history. I think reading resolutions have always been a thing. I did some research on this a couple of years ago and reading resolutions is like always read more books is always in like the top 10 resolutions that people pick. I don't know where it originated on the Internet. I wouldn't be surprised if it's Goodreads.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Which makes you easy to track and show off.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Where you set your own goal for how many. The number of books that you want to read. And then that's your Goodreads challenge for the year. But the Read Harder Challenge is about expanding your reading life in whatever ways you want to think about expanding it. But we do it by offering 24 tasks which you could shake out to be two per month around things like read a micro history, read a YA book by a Latin a author, read a book from the Zero to well Read podcast is.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Look at that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Look at that for 2026. I didn't know the editors were putting that in, so that was a pleasant story.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Can we get that hyperlinked? Can we get that hyperlinked so people.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Can read a romantasy with a queer or bipoc main character, which is an important thing to bring to a big trendy genre that has not gotten a lot of diversity, at least not a lot of the romantasy books with, you know, bipoc and queer characters have risen to the top of like the TikTok field. And if you want to get creative, you can get creative. And you could find a classic from the Zero to well Read podcast that you know is also, you know, by an author who qualifies for this list. You can find ways to combine them. So if you're like 24 is a lot of tasks. That doesn't mean it has to be 24 books.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And again that we, you know, this went up earlier this week or last week, I can't remember earlier this week. And I was seeing some of the comments in one of them. I think there's, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about the harder in Read Harder. And that is going to be where you got to do some homework here. And you know, it's, you're gonna, you may have to figure out who is who, who uses they. You may have to research who uses they, them, pronouns, or second person or I just sort of spit. I don't have all of the challenges here at the top of my head, but I will say that this is one where you got to dig a little bit deeper. You're probably not going to be able to walk into a bookstore with just this and fill them all out. So that's the read Harder challenge. And you know, you can, you can build the suit a little bit. If you want to do 12, you want to do eight, maybe you want to do two for each particular challenge. All of these things are possible here. But the idea, I mean, not unlike zero to well, read, which is the idea of getting out of a certain comfortable, unexamined, put a little effortfulness, mindfulness into your reading, if you will.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I think it really depends on your personality and your approach to these things. You can approach it as a box checker of I want to get all 24 of these and get as creative as I can about how to knock those out. But you could also look down the list and what of these are you already reading? And what of these would be prompts where you would have to do a little digging or bring some intent to your book selection and that that task would be expansive to your reading life. The thought behind it is there are plenty of other reading challenges that are just for funsies or just for hitting a number goal, but this one is about enriching your reading life in some way so you don't have to read any more books than you read last year for this challenge to be a success for you. We're just looking for you to be bringing some thoughtfulness. And book riot cares very intentionally and overtly about divers of voices and representation. So we're encouraging you to, to do that in your reading too. This episode is sponsored by Quints. When it comes to holiday gifting, I want to give things people will really love, pieces that feel special and still get worn constantly. And as someone who's been a Quint's customer for years. I can tell you they deliver. I recently got their 100% washable silk slip dress, paired it with a motorcycle jacket and suddenly looked like someone who had plans and knows how to dress when she leaves the house instead of someone who's worked from home for a decade. The silk drapes beautifully and bless it can just be washed at home. Quince truly has something for everyone. Mongolian cashmere sweaters for $50, elegant silk tops and skirts, perfectly cut denim and outerwear that actually keeps you warm. Their Italian wool coats are beautifully tailored, soft to the touch and crafted to last for seasons. Everything from Quince is made with premium materials in ethical, trusted factories and priced far below what other luxury brands charge. You can see the craftsmanship in the fit, the drape, the detailing. It's all elevated and timeless and made to wear on repeat. Find gifts so good you'll want to keep them with quints. Go to quint.com bookriot for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com bookriot to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com bookriot.

[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

Available wherever you get your podcast and.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Watch season two of Percy Jackson, streaming now on Disney and Hulu. Learn [e-mail] what's on Speaking of annual traditions, we do like to check in on Publishers Weekly and their annual salary and jobs report. And this is, you know, since we've been doing that, there's been a lot more consistent attention on the demographics of those who work in publishing, especially major publishers. It feels like the heat is off a little bit now as it was 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 years ago really, as these issues were really brought to the fore and now they've been at the fore, but they're not as much in the spotlight. Rebecca so it's interesting to see where we are right here. I don't know if there's really a top line, I guess marginal increases in diversity, marginal increases, interestingly in job satisfaction. Slight changes to the spread between the median pay for men and women. This has been a dynamic we've talked about for a long time where there are a lot more women that work in publishing, but men get paid more to the tune of 79,000 to 97. And that is largely, as far as we can tell, a reflection of there's more men in management roles, which is a dynamic that's true in almost all American workforces, I should say, but especially noticeable in probably the area of cultural production, that is most women staffed, I would say I can't think of any other industry that comes close, though I don't know them as well. And to continue to see that dynamic, their pay rises of 3ish percent or so. There's some stuff about artificial intelligence that's my overall do you want to drill down on any of this or what did you see with your particular eyes?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I thought one of the interesting things PW did this year, and they might have done it in past years, but I don't recall seeing it broken out this way, is specifically looking at what the responses are for people who have been in the industry six years or less and how those newer younger workers, what they look like relative to folks who have been in the industry a longer time and of course like their pay is lower because they're newer in the industry. The median pay for people who've been in Publishing for six years or less is 56,000 doll dollars a year. That is notably below the living wage for New York for a single person. But we've known that in publishing. But also like their job satisfaction is pretty high. Their diversity is higher in that group of people. Fewer of them are white than in folks who have been in the industry longer, which does point to progress in the pipeline. Like when we need Diverse books was first rolling out and when this conversation was really like much more present and top of in the industry as a whole, a lot of the conversation was, well, if you want to have more diversity at the top, one of the key things is more diversity at the bottom of the ladder so that those people can climb into these leadership positions. And it does take years, if not decades to reach a place where leadership is more diversified. But it looks like that like entry level is getting more diverse, which is good to see. Interesting, as you noted, to see job satisfaction with slight increases. And I've wondered how much of this is just that we're having some dist now from COVID and from how unsatisfied basically everybody was.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Everybody was. That's true. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It didn't matter what you were. Yeah. It did not matter what your job was. In Covid, most everybody felt some, you know, discomfort and. Or that like generalized discomfort and lack of satisfaction. Got put on to job satisfaction, certainly. But it does seem like there has been some settling. This year was less disruptive in the industry in terms of big layoffs or in terms of consolidation than we've seen in past years. That probably has an impact as well. But no major new alarm bells here. Also no major trophies for huge progress.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I think the other thing that's going to be interesting to watch is now that it feels like we've hit a bit, I don't know if a plateau, but a new normal in understanding and attention to these issues. Is it going to continue in the future because initiatives about increasing diversity or inclusion, the dreaded DEI moniker, which has become a flashpoint, how much that's going to have negative repercussions into the future? I think at the very least it will not have a lot of external. The external pressures like the employee walkouts, the other kind of cultural conversations from the external places into the publishing industry that has clearly lessened. But I do think, and I continue to believe the people I talk to when I go talk to people in publishing and again, who knows if they're telling the truth or how representative they are. And I've said this for the last several years on this show, they sort of generally think like you and I do about these things and there are structural problems all across the board, but I think they're more internally motivated than ever before. But there's going to be less external pressure for really high profile changes like the era of getting an interesting new voice into a high level editorial role. We saw those appointments happen a lot over the last four or five years. I have seen nary a one that I can remember over the last few. But that doesn't mean the ground level through the bottom of the ladder isn't changing. And over time, and we've been saying this for five, six, Seven years. It takes time to become the CEO, the executive editor, this chief financial author. That's a multi decade career thing. So even these efforts are going to take some time to go up the ladder, but they still need pressure, they still need time and effort. So I'm not sure, I don't know if it's a wait and see how much we are in a sort of a bit of a glide path from what's happened before. It's not terrific news, but it's also not bad news. It is a, you got to keep, you got to keep paddling, you got to keep swimming here. Publishing, you're swimming, we see you swimming, but you got to keep doing it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's pretty like steady as she goes right now. Which I think also makes sense for here we are 11 months into this administration that began with so an anti dei. And my understanding of how that played out in publishing was not that publishing actually cares less about dei, but that the initiatives are quieter.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Because no one wanted to draw fire, at least, you know, especially early in this Trump administration for big, vocal DEI efforts. And certainly this administration has things to say about books and ideas and literature. And Donald Trump is no stranger to suing publishers. So, like, publishing has sort of been in Trump's crosshairs in one way or another for all of the times that he's occupied office. I don't know any details about things that publishing like particular companies might be doing, but my understanding is that DEI is still happening. We're calling it different things so that we get less attention for it. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And one of the things pulling focus is included in this survey, which is artificial intelligence. I think clearly it's been the biggest story in the arts and publishing specifically, because large language models deal with language as does publishing. And this is an area of some concern. I think the numbers here are quite a bit different year over year than the demographic and pay stuff where, for example, this year 72% of respondents to this survey, which we should say is self selecting in methodology. Publishers Weekly does everything they can, but they can't make everyone participate. This year, 72% said they believe AA will be bad for publishing. That's up from 54% last year. So really you're going from about sort of 50 ish percent to 75 ish percent. So that seems to me a noticeable uptick there. Publishers Weekly notes that there sort of two buckets. One is that new industry members worry that the increased use of AI will result in job losses, while more experienced folks are seeing copyright issues Decline the quality as the most troubling issue. So generally younger people tend to be more worried about their jobs. So that anything that they're worried about is like, I mean, I might lose my job. And that's totally understandable.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, totally.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I do think that it's interesting to see that 63% of their said their companies use AI, but they say they don't like it the more they're familiar with it. And I will say for myself, I have found some uses, especially around structured data and things like that. But the brainstormy let it, write it for me, all that kind of stuff, I am much, much less. I was never really bullish on it, but I was trying to keep an open mind. I have less of an open mind about the textual production capabilities for most people doing interesting work now, copying is not interesting.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Interesting.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And it can do that. Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Any thoughts about the AI stuff? I mean, I think that is one area where if you, if you have limited number, we each only have two shoulders to put into things. And I think for the last decade or so, outside of the normal sort of business operations of publishing, you know, ebooks and piracy and all the things that go into it, the inclusion and diversity was the big story in what publishing was trying to do on a meta scale. I think now this is a bigger, you know, remember we do word clouds. Rebecca. I think the artificial intelligence word cloud is taking up more of the space.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, it's just, and I think it's just because we mean so many different things when we say what is AI doing to publishing? It could be, will it take your job? It could also be, is it impacting the quality of copy editing as some of the folks in this survey said? But it's also like, is it resulting in big, like, how are these big lawsuits going where copyrighted materials have been stolen from and taken without permission from authors and publishers for use in training these models. There are so many different applications of it. Like, I have continued to think of AI tools the way that we were told to think of them at the very beginning. Like when ChatGPT was brand new, the messaging was like, think about it as an intern. Like, this is your like entry level intern. You have to manage it. You have to tell it how to do its job and what to do and be specific. Like, and that it has. My intern is a little smarter than it was four years ago. But not like I not a replacement for specialized creative kinds of work. Are we talking about like AI illustrations on book covers? It doesn't Seem that the industry is really interested and open to that. A lot of agents and publishers are asking when manuscripts are submitted for disclosure if anything has been generated by AI or like, did you run your manuscript through AI? Like what counts as using AI to write your book? Is even a question like if I write my whole manuscript, but I put it through ChatGPT and ask ChatGPT to like point out like what's repetitive or maybe what's missing or any of those kinds of early editorial things. Have I like quote unquote cheated in the eyes of the industry? It can just mean so many different things and there's such a cloud of anxiety around it that I think even just like do you think AI is going to be bad? Is an understandable question to ask. But it's far too. It's a blunt instrument for a conversation that really has a lot of nuance.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Because it seems to me the big scary giant monster under the bed is. Is there a world in which an LLM client can produce full length publishable manuscripts that if they were written, quote unquote by a human in the more conventional sense would be undetectable as AI and do all the same things? I think the jury is very much still out on that. I have seen a study around 450 word, basically snippets creation of that where it seems like it can mimic an Ishiguro or other people like that for 450 words, but you have to put that input into it. So is it still just copying, recreating, doing impressions or I don't know, some sort of super sophisticated version of fan fiction? But it can never write, never let me go originally. And that's the question or can it ever. That's the central question for me. Everything else to me seems like a little bit of side dishes and dressing. I'm worried about the turkey and the ham and that's the turkey and the ham question.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And like what are we even talking about when we're talking about can it create art? Yeah, Ishiguro is a great example there. Like could ChatGPT generate a 300 page book that feels novel and creative and tapped into human intelligence? I don't know. But Amazon is working on technology that I think will be especially or could be especially threatening for genre fiction that can pay attention to the tropes that you like to read, the like pacing of plots that you like to read and that could generate like this is the idea for some of this is to algorithmically generate genre fiction. Exactly. To individual readers specific taste to keep them buying more of those things and that they can get packaged, those can get dropped in a Kindle store with a regular person's name on them and you won't know that they're AI generated or they can be recommended to you specifically because of what Amazon knows about your habits and your reading preferences. And so I think one of the possibilities here is that we've been having this conversation about AI is coming for art and it seems to me less likely that AI is coming for high art, the kinds of writing that wins book awards and Nobel prizes, but increasingly possible that it will come for the more like tropefied, genrefied, formulaic kinds of fiction that, and I'm painting with a broad brush, so don't send me emails, but like that tend the kinds of fiction that can tend to be more about like having a certain experience or ringing certain emotional bells than about the writing itself.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I mean the more formulaic the genre or the writing a genre within a genre. Right. The more able a formula master the one ring to rule them all for formulas, which is what an LLM is.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The more formulaic something is, the more abilities it's going to have to generate that. And the less formulaic the least ability. And that's when we get into art and literary fiction.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And all of this is also tied to algorithmic social media as well. Like publishing is leaning into that. I think I've mentioned on the show, I've heard received galleys of romantasy books that in lieu of a synopsis on the back have bullet points that just list the tropes and like the TikTok terminology that that book satisfies. And if you're going to market books that way to those readers, then the algorithm is going to serve them more of those things and pull them into more and more specified or specific types of content because that's how algorithms are able to succeed and keep us inside the algorithm. And the more that publishing caters to that, I also think the more likely it is that we find ourselves in a world where there's a bun a much bigger divide between the highbrow and the middle or the low brow forms of books.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I mean could, could some, if not all books be mass produced like a Model T Ford is, is kind of what you're suggesting there. And the more interchangeable those parts are, the easier it is to turn into the digital factory line. And it reminds me a little bit of, you know, and this is a, this is a real phenomenon and I, and I Don't read in the genre myself, but you go into a bookstore and you see the commercial romance table, though I see fewer of those like they were two years ago, where all the covers kind of look the same and those covers are telling you a story about what to expect with them, which is a certain sameness, though they're not, you know, identical. That is ripe for aha, pattern matching. Look at this pattern with a lot of detail and a lot of reps you can get in there. I think those would be especially, you know, susceptible to whatever this kind of disruption looks like. I will be curious to see. It does remind me a lot though, Rebecca. And we were around for this. I don't. It's not quite the same chicken littleness of it, but, like, what were ebooks going to do to books and the dirt. I wonder if there's an analog between the durability in the print of print and a fundamental, I guess, moral, philosophical, emotional desire to read the work of humans. Now, whether or not we can tell the difference between those two is a separate question. But I wonder as these powers of commodification grow, that the redoubt of the specific, the individual humanness piece will become more valuable then because everything else is commodified.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think that's really interesting and. And I hope that's what we'll see. Like, kind of a reaction. There have been a lot of news stories in this last part of the year about reactions against the algorithm, reactions against social media. Australia just passed that law where, like, kids under 16 can't have social media logins. Like, a lot of people are trying to turn back towards a more analog or at least a less algorithmically driven existence. I think it's possible that that could be beneficial for books. This feels a little bit like the chicken little stuff with ebooks to me, but that was really like, what does it do to print books? Because I have affection for print books. And what does it do to the industry's margins? Because print books, especially hardcovers, are so high margin and at the time at least, like, ebook production was expensive and folks were really worried that the industry just wouldn't have money if everybody started reading ebooks. And this is more of a, like, what happens to the contents of these books with AI that to me is a more existential question for the industry than like, we get a new format. And I feel like the industry learned its lesson for. From freaking out over the format of ebooks. Like, audiobooks have been on the rise for the last decade and no one is wringing their hands about what will happen to print if more people listen to audiobooks, which feels like progress to me.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I will say this, and we haven't checked in about AI in a while here. I do see from time to time still a kind of almost an SAT analogy. Well, like NFTs and crypto didn't turn out to be that big of a deal. Ergo, AI shouldn't be. I will say this for my part, my one particular chair in my one particular room in my one particular city. And gig AI and LLMs have escape velocity way beyond NFTs and crypto. I. If you're using the. Well, that didn't turn out to be a thing as a sticking your head in the sand. A lot of poultry metaphors here, Chicken Littles, ostrich with their head in the sand. Let me say this. They are birds of a different feather. They are clearly different to me because you can see the use cases. You can see, see what's already being done. There's always a bit of a step two, question mark, question mark, question mark thing with NFTs and whatever, with AI and LLMs and video generation and a lot of the things that I look at and I read about it is it's here it's only a question of extensibility, not presence. Whereas with NFTs, they're essentially gone at this point. And I never understood the story behind those. I should say, whereas with AI and LLMs, I understood the story sort of right away. Way I could see the story behind that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's just so there's so much more to AI than LLMs. Like, like, if the, if you are just picturing ChatGPT, when, when people talk about AI, you're picturing actually like a pretty small sliver of what artificial intelligence is already doing, like across industries and around the world. And what it has the potential to do down from like, you know, your recommended playlists in Spotify. A lot of that is algorithmic artificial intelligence driven to like the fact that my iPhone knows how to tell me. Like, like if I text you and say, do you want to get dinner on Wednesday night? And then I open up my calendar and tap Wednesday, it'll be like dinner with Jeff. Like it's. It is just everywhere. And I totally agree. I think the fact that ChatGPT and like the large language models have not turned out to like eclipse the capacity to produce book books in like in these first four years doesn't mean that AI itself is not going to live up to all of the Predictions about how disruptive it will be and already has been for industries.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I tell you the one thing that it's. I mean Facebook was already bad. I used to check in on Facebook every now and again. My personal thing, the amount of AI fake garbage is truly shocking. And I know Australia just passed this under 16. You can't do so social. I've got a different one. If you're 50, if you are drawing on your 401k, you need to take a class. You need to get some sort of real ID certification about how to spot, you know, give yourself a minute to us. We need to move our priors for video and images online to assume it's fake. We just do. Rebecca, I think you know, you have to do like you need trusted sources now more than ever. Ever. Some random webpage looking thing with a story about. I see one, I get a lot of football news because I follow the Chiefs. A completely fake story with completely fake art that looks super real with a whole bunch of engagement on it. And these social networks are turning into honey pots for the, for the dupable. And it's a real, real problem. So anyway, I can get that off my chest here. But it's, that's the places where it's totally bad.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, that connects to another story that we have in our notes for today that broke this morning from Gizmodo that librarians are really tired of being accused of hiding books from you that don't actually exist. And it's because the LLMs are so good at hallucinating and so frequently hallucinate book titles. There was that big story back in the summer where I think it was the Chicago Tribune. It was either the Tribune or the Sun Times. One of the Chicago papers did like Books of Summer and half of them did not actually exist.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Exist.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But people are asking ChatGPT and Gemini and like Claude for book recommendations or they're doing research and they are then going into libraries and bookstores asking for these titles that Chat GPT told them exist for their research. And when the librarian or the bookseller says that's not real, apparently they're getting quite a frequent pushback on like but it's here in my recommendations. And just the fact as you were talking about trusted sources, like we gotta believe the person in front of us who has specialized knowledge and education more than we believe the AI chatbot that we know can hallucinate things like double check your sources. If before you, you know, go shopping for the book, do an additional search outside of AI for instance, Go on.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Goodreads, go on Amazon, go on Bookshop one of these places and just see if it exists there because they'll tell you. And also, don't don't I need to talk to your manager to librarians about a book you found through your LLM because I've tried to use it for research and sometimes it'll surface. Interesting, but you got to do a quick spot check to see because they're fake.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You've got a spot check stuff. And like I don't know how all of the different tools work, but I know that in chat GPT you can give it durable instructions to follow across your prompts. And one of the things I've done is only give me answers that you can give me a verified link for. And then I want the link which is helpful also that check that link.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Because the web is AI generated so there's a certain or Maroboros effect here that's very difficult to do. So anyway, yeah, don't do that. Check yourself.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Don't be that guy.

[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

On the other hand, I don't know if this is part and parcel of similar dynamics. So. Hello, sunshine. Which is the parent company of Reese Witherspoon Spoons Book Club, is launching a Gen Z book club, which I have to say as a headline, I did sort of recoil briefly, but I tried to check myself on that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's called Tell me more about that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm opposed, generally speaking, to thinking in terms of generation. I just don't like it. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is a crotchety thing to say, but I feel like it's a little bit like sorting yourself into Hogwarts houses or remember your divergent thing or as you know, astrology is real and I believe it implicitly with no notes. I just feel like there's a gross level of sorting that I find myself really resistant to and that that could say a lot about me. And I think that it does buy and for Gen Z readers, makes my skin crawl. Now, for younger women, I'm all on board with that. And I think that's all they're trying to say here.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't like this idea of not only do young women have sort of similar traits, that Gen Z is like, different from other cohorts of young people that come before them. Because I've got to tell you, at this point, Rebecca, I think that's all garbage. I think young people are young people and they just are. And then maybe they're slightly different from generation to generation, but this, like Gen X and Jen, Elsa and millennials and ex boomers and this stuff makes me nuts. It all makes me crazy.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

What a crotchety Gen X position for you to take.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. The Gen Xer doesn't want to be pigeonholed. News at 11.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You're too cool for that. Damn the man.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm not too cool for it. I just. I think it's reductive and I think it's lazy. That's what I'll say.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I. I think this is just code. And especially in the Reese's Book Club framing for. We're trying to reach younger women who are plugged in on social media and getting recommendations from TikTok. Yeah. And where the typical book club reader is like a woman in her mid-30s to early 50s.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The mom crowd. Like, that's who we talk about when we're talking about book club. The book club people. And that Reese is trying to tap into this younger market because they are driving a lot of Book sales like Booktok kept publishing afloat last year and it's a, that is an audience that is searching for community and does want connection. Now my gripe about it is how much community and connection do you actually get from Reese's Book Club?

[Jeff O'Neill]

How much community connection do you get from algorithms? I mean maybe people are feeling it but I, I can't help but feel like it's a little bit of a. I don't know, I feel like it's Erzatz. I do wonder and maybe it's what you have what you have and I, I will also push back on the book talk save publishing. I think in the whole it's worse for publishing for these algorithms exist. I just think it looks like oh.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, I agree just the sales like kept us afloat last year but it also condenses attention and money right now around like one very specific kind of book that is a trend that won't last forever. Like no trend lasts forever.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Can I read you a late capitalist dystopian sentence from this? You may have please. Hello sunshine. Whose parent company Candle Media is backed by Blackstone Manage Investment Capital Capital. So when we talk about authentic engagement here, just remember here what series of spreadsheets is coming for your your one wild and precious reading life. Yeah again trying to surface books that young women who want to read, want to read. Great. It's the whole apparatus and taxonomy around like it's I would find this if I were reading this and I was a total target sort of 22 year old doing reading and wanting to read books and I read this, I'd be like get me the hell away from this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean this is the late capitalist nightmare of this press release for me is Sunny reads His intended audience is one that blurs the line between readers and lifestyle consumers. The identities of Gen Z contain multitudes. Chowdhury said the book club aims to engage its members at the cross sections of their interest through partnerships like the one with Coach, which at a recent Sunny event event hosted a book nook featuring some of the company's handbags. This is not about like, like everything else on social media, it is not about connecting. It is about selling you something and that's fine if you want to buy the thing they're selling but like let us just know that if you want community in a book club like you can find those online. There are real places that people are talking to each other or you can sit in somebody's living room or in a coffee shop and like have a meeting with other People. People in person that is just about the book and the source of connection and the community. It is not about. Hey, would you like to consume this part of lifestyle?

[Jeff O'Neill]

You don't need a coach bag to go. Would you like your multi hundred into thousand dollar coach bag to go with your I don't know if it library book?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't think we talked about this on the show but I put it in one of the headers for the flagship newsletter a month or two ago. Queana, which is this like luxury women's brand. It's the brand that the. The woman in the new Dan Brown book has the clutch purse like magic battery in it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. Totally non product place.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. It's not spawn at all. They partnered with Reese's Book Club recently on like a. A gorgeous like leather tote that has like some book related something engraved on it where your monogram would normally go and like a special little pocket for your book. And the thing is like $400. It's like this is. It's capitalizing on interest to sell. Sell goods. Like capitalizing on readerly identity to sell goods. Which is fine but let's just call it what it is man.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't even think it's capitalizing a reading identity. I think it's capitalizing on the W2s of the kinds of people that still care about reading books at all.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Which are people that tend to be more affluent in general. And that's not good or bad. And does say nothing about books anyone can read or most people have access to reading at some kind or certainly can and there. And there's serious barriers to it. But what this is is the kind of person who buys a $30 hard back from their local independent bookstore and is following Reese Witherspoon on Soch is the kind of person that people want to market to. Yes, I have an orthogonal thing that I meant to get in. Someone texted me. Excuse me. Emailed us about a dynamic of my. My half baked idea which I think is actually more of a fully booked baked idea about getting books into movie theaters when there's a, you know, an adaptation.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The. The one someone sent to me is you need to think about Broadway musical theaters because interesting. It's almost exactly the same demographic. Like the. The median Broadway attendee is like a 41 year old white woman that does pretty well for herself and her family if she has one. And the other thing about that that's different is those things can then play for years where the movie switches in and out like I went to go see and Julia yet. Right. That thing's been there for several years. They could have the Shakespeare stuff. They could have a whole table and they own the theater and they have the relationship with it. So anyway it's a much smaller than all movie theaters but it struck me as you know, there's a water for elephants thing and maybe some of these did have it does the wicked thing. Does the wicked thing and I call it the Mothership there because it's been there for almost 20 years. Do they have all the Gregory McGuire books out there ready to buy? Boy, I hope so. Anyway. Modifying your reading but that's just getting in front of of it. That's not here. So I guess the other thing and maybe I've been zero to well read pilled and we're going to do an episode sort of about this. The more. The more we go back and read some of these durable works and I'm not even call them the great books. It's a whole different that comes with unloaded but these more durable works. I find this also of getting coach between me and the Bluest Eye to be frankly inspired. Insulting.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Can you imagine someone having the gall to approach a Toni Morrison for like a sponsored placement deal?

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know Morrison and Hurston herself. We did their Eyes and Hurston was.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Cranky to begin with.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, I think they're. I think a lot of these writers too. Their take on certain things are less predictable than you might expect. I mean Zor is more conservative than I think we would. We would understand. And again, it's a different era and this is doesn't line up extremely neatly. I don't want to presume to think what Toni Morrison would say. I think there's a world where she has something a very surprising read that even I would be surprised by in multiple directions and multiple vectors. But I will say that the idea of, you know, reading Oedipus by Aeschylus and sort of the conversation we had around that which I found very meaningful and very helpful and very sustaining. I don't need Starbucks in that conversation. I just don't.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, it doesn't need to be mediated by anything. There was a piece that got passed around earlier this week and Sharifah included it in Today in Books. That was if you quit social media, will you read more books? And that writer's answer was no. But my response just with my own self was it works the other way around. If you read more books you will want less social media has been my experience.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There is a Bit of Neo pulling the plug out of a cerebral cortex in the matrix. That can happen. If you can kind of, you know, I can't remember which is the red or blue pill, then that has its own political online coding that I'm not interested in participating or trafficking in. But I do it then helps me see something like this to again. I don't think anyone's intentions are bad here. I think if people need more books that are interesting, important to them, that's great. I'm suspicious of this actually furthering that process but. But boy, it's coming for all of our spaces for sure. I guess with that. Frontless Foy is Sponsored by ThriftBooks. ThriftBooks.com where you can find. We can certainly find Oedipus there. I don't think they're gonna be picking Oedipus in the Sunny Reads Book Club. If they pick, you know, Orlando by Virginia Woolf or the street by Ann Petrie, I would be thrilled and I will eat my metaphorical hat. And please send me the link when they do those things with thrift books, you can, you can buy really every book that you could possibly buy because they've got all of them new and used. Each purchase gets you closer to redeeming a reading rewards once you join their loyalty program and free shipping to US customers of orders over 15 bucks. I've been highlighting used books that you can find. You can, you know, three or four used books and you can get the free shipping there. If you're not trafficking new books, we can find new books there as well. Thanks to Thriftbooks.com for sponsoring front list foyer. Rebecca, why don't you go first. I'm going to do a mini annotated corner about something I read.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

All right, I'm looking at my reading.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Here and I told you this story already, but why don't you go ahead and lead us off?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I've been reading Feast on youn Life by Tamara Adler, which just came out. It's a collection of food essays. I had been looking forward to this and then when I started it was delighted to discover that it's a.

[Jeff O'Neill]

One.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Entry a day over the course of a year book which people are always asking us for on recommendation episodes. So now I have one more to put in my bag. But she was going through a depression and trying to redefine her relationship to alcohol and was searching for delights. She is a cook, she's written cookbooks. She's a professional food person and decided I wonder if there is some Ross Gay influence happening here that she would try to write a short essay about something that delighted her, related to food each day. And some of them are very specific about, like, certain ingredients or the way the thing tastes or smells. But some of it is like making this thing and watching her child eat it, or like, the fun of receiving a freshly baked loaf of bread from a neighbor as a thank you for a favor that she did. They're short. It's like maybe a page or two. Some of them are one paragraph. I have found that when I'm up early and I'm having my coffee and I'm sitting by the Christmas tree, this is a nice time of year for, like, let's just sort of sink in and swim around in someone's nice feelings about food and family and all of the things that it means. So I'm really, really enjoying that. I'm also really in my bag right now because I am rereading H Is for hawk by Helen MacDonald. There's an adaptation coming out in January that Helen MacDonald wrote with Emma Donoghue, starring Claire Foy. And I have the great privilege of moderating a panel about it, a virtual panel next week. Yeah. That, sadly, is like, it's an invitation only, closed situation. But I think I should have some footage from it afterwards. But it's been such a pleasure. It was one of my favorite books in 2015 when it came out. There are scenes from it that have remained indelible for me. If you are unfamiliar, this is a memoir. The year after MacDonald's father died. And MacDonald had had experience training other kinds of hawks, but they adopted a goshawk, which is sort of famously difficult to train. And we're also obsessed with this TH White book that he had written. He's the once and future king guy. For those of you who are like, th sounds familiar. He had trained goshawks and written a book about it, you know, like, centuries ago. And it interweaves her experience, their experience, sorry. Training this hawk with the reading of T.H. white's book about goshawks. And ultimately, like, this is how Helen MacDonald processes their grief of their father, is redirecting all of this energy into being with this animal who is undeniably wild and very powerful and intimidating and requires you to find, like, a certain stillness and a certain. Certain discipline and patience that are both really challenging and really restorative for them. It is so beautiful. Like, I remember, I knew that this was a wonderful, beautiful book, but going back to it has been such a gift. So that's terrific. That's me. Take us into annotated corner.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, so my leisure reading was soaked up this week by diving into the backstory behind Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales. And there's actually a reason for this, this. So, you know, I was thinking about things I could write a little about for the Book Riot newsletter. So this is a sideways plug for that. I'll put. There's a link in the show notes that, you know, you are captioning, but I'm filling in some blanks and doing some of the writing for it as well. And I had, I had known for a long time that A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas was like a big deal. And I'd listen to it. It's like 20 minutes long. It's a short memoir piece that the great poet wrote, wrote. And I had just sort of put in her content calendar something about it, you know, like where you could stream it, you know, what this backstory was behind it. But I found in that story, the more interesting story to me, which was the story of these two women who invented audiobooks as we know them.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Frankly, this was such a surprise and delight when I saw this piece come in.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. So Barbara Holdridge and Marianne man founded what would be known as Cadman Records. Cadman, pardon me, Cadman Records in New York in 1952. So I'm going to do mini annotated. This will be a bit of a repeat if you do read the Book Riot newsletter, but if you haven't, I think you'll enjoy it. It's. They were new young professionals, less than three years in the industry, according, you know, they'd be in that Publishers Weekly cohort there, one of them working in records and one of them working in publishing. And they were having, having lunch one day in February of 1952 at Schrafts, which was. There's no real modern equivalent, but it would be like Sweet Green or something like where young people go to have lunch together in Manhattan at the time. And they had the conversation about how everyone they're working with is so much stupider than they. Than they were. It's not just Gen Z is what I'm saying. Rebecca, 22 years old in 1952, were ambitious. They thought the old people were dumb and they wanted to disrupt the media industry. And since their unique combination of expertise led them to think they wanted to get into recording spoken word poetry and have poets read into a recorder and then put it on to long playing records, LPs, which were a New thing at the time. And remember, this is 1952. This is jazz records. This is not Bill Haley and the Comets into Elvis and the Beatles. Where the record buying, I guess, industries we know it was really coming into the fore like there. Certainly jazz was the thing that created the. The record industry as we knew it before it became a mass popular. That thing you do kind of everywhere. Everyone all at once was buying records. So they were ahead of the curve in that regard. And they just saw that Dylan Thomas was giving a reading. He was over from England giving a reading. So they decided to go to the Chelsea Hotel where we were staying and pass him a note using only their first initials. Because they were worried he wasn't going to take him seriously because they were women and he was interested. And they came to find out that he would have been more sympathetic, you know, that they were women trying to do something otherwise. But they made a deal. Dylan Thomas famously had real alcohol abuse issues. He died a year later after he met these two young women. But he agreed to read some of their poems into the can. As they said they had a relationship with someone who'd let them use the recorder for free. They had pay for the records. They give Dylan Thomas a $500 advance against the first thousand and then royalties on anything they sold over that. They had no idea what to project, by the way, because no one had ever done this before. But they realized that they had about 10 minutes of poems and they still had a whole bunch of record left because it was called an LP for a reason. And that's what they wanted to print on. He's like. They're like, do you have anything else like, well, I had this piece I wrote for Madam as well a few years ago. I kind of like it. It might work. People might like it. So that's where they used A Child's Christmas at Wales to fill out the record.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Incredible.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They print it and it becomes a smash over the next decades. It sells more than 400,000 copies. It's a novelty item. The record is not the. The record. The original album art is not the work of Dylan Thomas. It's a Child's Christmas in Wales. And it looks very 50s, like you'd recognize the style of it. And the thing that really took off, they say, is. And there was. This is where it comes into where my reading slash researching time when I was listening to old interviews with Barbara Holdridge and she said, the thing that really took off was people. I should. You know, I don't need to be more specific. Than people. I can be more specific than people there that men coming back from World War II on the GI Bill were getting into poetry. And they really resonated with this sort of nostalgic sad bittersweetness of Dylan Tomlin's reading of it, which is, boy, I missed the things as they were. And boy, aren't we getting older. But also, isn't it grand that we had that for a minute and they didn't have a large network of sales agents, so GI's would see that their friend or whatever have it. They look up on the back where Cadman Records was, look up their office and just knock on their door to try to buy the record.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Incredible.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And so there was word of mouth from GI to GI over this time. And they founded Cadman Records, which became a multimillion dollar dollar business that would go on to record the work of other notable writers. And Barbara Holdridge, who just died this year, actually April of 2025, said, you know, we just got lucky that one of these things we printed just ran away.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They didn't throw away their shot though.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They didn't their shot. And you know, they got lucky and they were tenacious. And you can now on Spotify or Amazon Music, it's available if you subscribe to something as a single track. The whole A Child's Christmas in Wales is about 20 minutes long. That's the original Dylan Thomas recording. It's been remastered since and then a lot of other audiobook things. And they eventually sold this to Raytheon and then Raytheon bought and it's now all part of HarperCollins. Is a long way of saying it now, but audiobook trailblazers, Christmas, nostalgia, the history of media, all those stories and I had to fit into 400 words. Rebecca. And I did my best.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I actually didn't cut any of the words on that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was trying. I was keeping it tight.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Man, you were, you were. You did a nice job.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So that's my story. So shouts to Barbara Holdridge and Marianne.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's inspiring.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Rooney later Mantel. I'm not sure how you're supposed to refer to people that have had multiple marriages and then died. So anyway, Mantel, Marianne Rooney, Mary Rooney, Marianne Rooney Later Mantel. But you could Google this all cadmorecords C, A, E, D M, O, N shouts to them for that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Love that story.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, so that's our show for today. BookRiot.com Listen for show notes. You can choose to email podcastookriot.com Go listen to Zero to All Read. Check out the Book Riot newsletter, the Patreon. All the links are there. Rebecca, thank you so much.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We'll talk to you, everybody. Have a good one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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