American Fiction review – entertaining comedy collision of race, class and envy

This enjoyable meta-level adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure tackles black-victimhood stereotypes, showcasing Jeffrey Wright and Issa Rae as rival writers

Poetry sales boom as Instagram and Facebook take work to new audiences

Writing and reading poems is no longer a minority pastime as verse overlaps with self-help genre and classics are revisited

Publisher drops author for using fake accounts to ‘review-bomb’ peers

Cait Corrain, whose book Crown of Starlight was due to be published next year, admits to leaving notices ‘that ranged from kind of mean to downright abusive’

‘The potential to undermine democracy’: European publishing trade bodies call for action on generative AI

Three organisations argue that more transparency is needed after research found AI models have been trained using pirated works by authors such as Zadie Smith and Stephen King

Spotify’s new audiobook streaming could have ‘devastating effect’, says Society of Authors

The industry body says the music giant’s move to make more than 150,000 titles available has not been discussed with authors and may compete with sales

Stephen Herbert obituary

Other lives: Expert in the technical aspects of the film industry who worked for the National Film Theatre

Four large US publishers sue ‘shadow library’ for alleged copyright infringement

The publishers are claiming unspecified damages from the file-sharing Library Genesis, which they say has distributed files illegally

UK publishers urge Sunak to protect works ingested by AI models

Publishers Association’s call comes as ChatGPT firm argues US lawsuit ‘misconceives scope’ of copyright law

‘We’re gripped by graphomania’: why writing became an online contagion and how we can contain it

Conspiracy theories, provocations, baseless accusations… long before our clickbait era, women in pre-revolutionary France were the subject of salacious attacks. Their response offers hope for us all

The Guardian view on Heartstopper: a phenomenon that defines a generation

Editorial: Alice Oseman’s tale of queer romance is a global success story built on fans who want to feel good about themselves in tough times

The Gutenberg Parenthesis by Jeff Jarvis review – how print shaped culture

From the Gutenberg press to the digital age, an illuminating account of the way technology influences the stories we tell

My big Birmingham bookshop crawl: why booksellers are suddenly thriving

In 2009, two bookshops a week were closing in the UK and the days of physical books seemed numbered. Now, indie stores are booming. What explains the turnaround – and can it be sustained?

Goodreads is right to divide opinions, wrong to boil them down

I don’t choose books based on the aggregate rating as if they are skincare products, nor do I think any critical verdict is the final one

Authors file a lawsuit against OpenAI for unlawfully ‘ingesting’ their books

Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay allege that their books, which are copyrighted, were ‘used to train’ ChatGPT because the chatbot generated ‘very accurate summaries’ of the works

Disney+ documentary reignites anger over Marvel Comics’ cult of Stan Lee

Families of artists Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby, and broadcaster Jonathan Ross, say pair were at forefront of creating Marvel characters