Picture this: Joe Wicks and his Instagram peers are strengthening publishing

The Body Coach is a million seller and other web stars’ books are selling very well. Publishers in profit is good news for readers – and some of these books are actually worth reading

AllRomance.com’s sudden closure hits authors hard

Romance ebook distributor is proposing to slash writers’ royalties after falling victim to downturn in digital reading market

Book-choice app Alexi aims to free readers from ‘algorithm rabbit hole’

New service featuring weekly picks from star authors including Bret Easton Ellis and Ali Smith hopes to introduce books ‘that challenge as well as entertain’

Fantastic riches and where to find them: how to grow a $22bn franchise

Fantastic Beasts is not just a new outpost for the Harry Potter empire. It is a pivotal moment in the creation of The Wizarding World of JK Rowling – and it could give the gold-gobbling niffler a run for its money. We go over the books

Jarett Kobek: ‘The internet has been enormously detrimental to society’

The author of Silicon Valley satire I Hate the Internet on the evils of social media, and how novelists have failed to tackle it

You can’t judge a book by its cover – if you’re a robot

An algorithm has been built to predict a book’s genre by its cover. Sadly for online booksellers, it doesn’t do a very good job

Erotic stories by Anaïs Nin consigned to Amazon’s adult content ‘dungeon’

New volume of the author’s erotica, written for a private patron in the 1930s, will not show up in searches except under specific conditions

YouTube stars the Sidemen are frontrunners in race for Christmas books No 1

Figures show that game-playing vloggers’ print debut sold more than 26,000 copies in its first three days on sale last week

Minecraft, books, panto… and pugs! YouTube star DanTDM opens up

His games channel has 12.7m subscribers, but Daniel Middleton’s horizons are expanding into publishing and theatre

In the age of the algorithm, the human gatekeeper is back

The rise of algorithms has been relentless, but we need human input in our world of technological innovations

George RR Martin and Apple announce interactive Game of Thrones books collaboration

A Game of Thrones: Enhanced Edition, available through Apple from Thursday, promises ‘a world of additional content’ including sigils, family trees and glossaries

Google swallows 11,000 novels to improve AI’s conversation

As writers learn that tech giant has processed their work without permission, the Authors Guild condemns ‘blatantly commercial use of expressive authorship’

How Kickstarter became one of the biggest powers in publishing

The crowdfunding site is now launching more books than all but the very largest publishers. Richard Lea finds out how a resource for small enterprises is making some big changes

EU proposals could see news publishers paid by Google and Facebook

Measures are part of a series of planned European commission changes designed to strengthen rights of creators and publishers

#Women_writers manifesto aims to build community of female authors

Laurie Garrison’s call to arms is intended to foster collaboration ‘rejecting traditional models of publishing’