Thanks to everyone at @acesediting.bsky.social for a fantastic #VCon25. Oh yes these dates for 2026 have gone straight in the diary 🎉 Hope you all get a good rest this weekend.

Spacial Chat – wow! Yes, I know in this pic I'm on my own – it didn't really seem fair to screen grab other people! You walk around rooms or gardens and when you go near people you can talk to them – actually talk, not type in chat. It's a way of recreating coffee break chat online. #ACESVCon25

We're ready with a yellow toy to bat around the room and a fun frame to make us smile while we learn 😻 #ACESVCon25 @acesediting.bsky.social

Thanks, Zoom – I might not have noticed I'd joined my own call otherwise! 😂 #ACESVCon

I’ve been looking forward to this one! #ACESVCon

I'm loving this example in Small Business Britain's Green Growth webinar this morning 😍

So interesting listening to Anna Jo Bratton of @apnews.com style on keeping up with language evolution and the complex discussions around potential changes – keeping in mind not just what's going on in the US, but also how other countries are affected (as with eg place names). #ACESVCon25

Excellent session on accessibility, with useful links for more information – pointers on key things to check to make sure your website is accessible as well as tips on writing alt text and captioning videos. @disabilitybelongs.bsky.social @acesediting.bsky.social #ACESVCon25

Editors are getting excited... 🎉 #ACESVCon25 @acesediting.bsky.social

I’m in back-to-back editing conferences for the next week – I’ll be spending a lot of time on Zoom with the cats, and little time in my mailbox. So please forgive me if I’m slower than usual replying to email. Kicking off tomorrow with @acesediting.bsky.social #VCon25

'Whether there's a solution to the problem remains a hotly debated subject, with some experts arguing that hallucinations are intrinsic to the tech itself. In other words, large language models may be a dead end in our quest to develop AIs with a reliable grasp on factual claims.'

Whova: no 😉😂 Two editing conferences back to back this week. Two highlights of the editing year. We’ve been looking forward to this week for aaaages. And it’s suddenly popped up to take us by surprise 😆 No, I’m not ready. Must remember to buy snacks tomorrow… @acesediting.bsky.social #ACESVCon25

I accidentally met both protest marches on my walk across London yesterday. Horrifying to see so many people opening chanting racist slogans – it felt unsafe for me to be there, and I look like them so I can’t even imagine how others must feel.

Helping out at @theees.bsky.social open day this morning 🎉 JEA = Journal of Egyptian Archaeology

ALLi's 2025 author income survey: if you've self-published at least one book in English, you're eligible to take part. @indieauthoralli.bsky.social www.surveymonkey.com/r/F6NT5MD

It’s editing conference season 🎉 The app for #ACESVCon25 has gone live, so #edibuddies are excitedly checking the schedule, starting chats and answering ice-breaker questions. Hurrah! @acesediting.bsky.social

I'm updating my portfolio and realised this book published today. It was such an interesting copy-edit – I learned a lot. www.routledge.com/Human-Alteri...

Loop the loop! I’ve been watching generations of these moth caterpillars all summer. Endlessly fascinating – especially when they walk 😍 #StetWalk

Excellent lunchtime Egyptology with @lisarandisi.bsky.social and @theees.bsky.social – looking at ephemera. The random bits and bobs in museum collections that initially had no value, such as food containers reused to transport artefacts, which give a snapshot of life on that excavation.

I love comparisons that let me visualise size: ‘the Greater Horseshoe Bat is about the size of a pear and the Lesser Horseshoe Bat is about the size of a plum’. I can visualise this in a way that I can’t with a measurement. RSPB Spotlight: Bats, Nancy Jennings

😮 I was on the beach. Very impressed but it looks like hard work! #StetWalk

A nice Friday afternoon job – I always enjoy my look back at what I've done over the past month. And what a fun month it's been 🎉 Have a great weekend.

grahamlovelace.substack.com/p/anthropic-... @glovelace.bsky.social

As the September 1 deadline nears to submit books for consideration in the class action lawsuit against AI company Anthropic, the Guild is advising its members to send their contact information and titles to the court-appointed class counsel for authors. The trial is set for December 1.

We urge all authors who believe their books may have been unlawfully downloaded by Anthropic to visit the website and provide the requested information. www.lieffcabraser.com/anthropic-au...

I'm too old for many of these, but I do know some of them, even if I can't use them without sounding like someone's cringe old aunt 😉

'let’s stop writing off all jobs as disappearing via AI and start looking at how, by taking the mundane repetitive tasks out of our lives, AI can make us all far more creative and innovative and we can go on discovering and publishing many quality... books.' www.thebookseller.com/comment/will...

For academics making the most of the summer to catch up on writing: how macros can help you check your citations against your references... I'm currently sitting on the balcony running this macro. Still so very grateful to have it. #Academia #Referencing www.suzannearnold.com/blog/using-m...

ICYMI: Too many authors are being short-changed by academic and educational publishers, says Anna Ganley in our recent Comment piece 👇 #BlueSky

'Suddenly, The Art of the Deal has become The Art of the Steal. Is it fair that creators are having their works purloined?' www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/... @publisherswkly.bsky.social

Behind the scenes on a #StetWalk

😂

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out – legal action in Canada. As Pubishers Weekly points out, 'the Canadian courts are not bound to U.S. legal precedent'. @publisherswkly.bsky.social www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Latest research on how the language used by politicians and the media influences public opinion.

Well this is intriguing! I took some time off and had a big jump in visits to my website. Do people like me more when I go quiet? 😆 It's been a good month – lots of Egyptology mixed in with a good dose of catching up with editor friends and time off with family.

Not a massive surprise, but still... 😓

Oh my goodness! This may look cute – and it is. But it also cuts to the heart 💔 Social comment, women’s rights and male mental health and friendship, all wrapped up in a murder mystery with a side serving of literary mystery. What a book! ‘A Case of Mice and Murder’, Sally Smith

What a week! Been in to London three times – for Grammar Day, a meeting with a publisher and @theees.bsky.social study day. And acted as a tour guide today for @wildlifeaid.bsky.social open weekend. Tired but happy 🌞

I’m in awe of the team producing Wimbledon programmes specific to each day. The logistics of producing each day’s pages, inserting them, binding and distributing the programmes every day for two weeks 😱

If only there'd been some way to predict this... Sigh. On a slightly less sarcastic note, this is why many editors ask if AI has been used in writing – because a lot of editing is taking LONGER if it's AI text rather than human text. Not always, obviously – but often.

I don’t go to Wimbledon very often – only a few times a year. But I know it well enough to get quite a shock seeing it in full tennis mode. The station doesn’t normally look like that. And the crowds for Bookfest tend to be rather smaller 😉 #StetWalk

Took a break from editing today to cover a shift at @wildlifeaid.bsky.social It’s still very busy – lots of babies coming in. And for those of you who are near Leatherhead, Surrey, UK, open weekend is next weekend, 12 and 13 July. The one chance a year to peep behind the scenes.

One of the biggest, er... let's say 'miscalculations' around. This 'moment' has been over an hour so far...

Halfway through 2025 already! On my to-do list this week: sunshine and Wimbledon tennis 🌞

I bookended today with two of my favourite things – an early-morning trip to Bushy Park (one of London’s old royal deer parks) before work, then Egyptology after work. Look at that baby coot with a damselfly! 😍😮 #StetWalk

Starting the evening by catching up on the recording of this discussion, which I didn’t manage to watch live yesterday: How to Submit Your Book to Publishers and Agents from Write Business Results.

I'm doing my final checks on a report that's about to publish, and have found some red underlined text in the middle of a paragraph. It's a well-intentioned attempt to 'track' edits with manual formatting rather than tracked changes. Very glad I found it! www.suzannearnold.com/blog/dont-us...

'“No matter how transformative LLM training may be, it’s hard to imagine it can be fair use to use copyrighted books to develop a tool to make billions of dollars” ... Had [the authors’ lawyers] “presented evidence that a jury could use to find in their favour ... would have needed to go to a jury.'

This isn't going to look like much to a lot of people, but it's made my day – the word 'to' spelled with a number zero instead of a letter O. Sometimes editors look at these things, exclaim joyously, then wonder how on earth did I even see that?! 🎉 #AmEditing